
/ 



Emily Bronte 



BY 



A. MARY F. "rOBINSON.-T).v.^- 




BOSTON: 
ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1883. 



w\ 



Copyright, 1883, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



Unitersity Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 






CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 

Introduction i 

I. Parentage lo 

II. Babyhood 24 

III. Cowan's Bridge 38 

IV. Childhood 54 

V. Going to School 71 

VI. Girlhood at Haworth 82 

VII. In the Rue D'Isabelle 104 

VIII. A Retrospect 123 

IX. The Recall 137 

X. The Prospectuses 148 

XI. Branwell's Fall 155 

XII. Writing Poetry 172 

XIII. Troubles 192 

XIV. 'Wuthering Heights:' its Origin . . . 206 
XV. 'Wuthering Heights:' the Story . . .225 

XVI. 'Shirley' 281 

XVII. Branwell's End 291 

XVIII. Emily's Death 298 

Finis! 312 



LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 



[846-56. The Works of Currer, Ellis, and Acton 
Bell. 

1857. Life of Charlotte Bronte. Mrs. Caskcll, 
1st and 2,nd Editions. 

1877. Charlotte Bronte. T. Weuiyss Reid. 

1877. Note on Charlotte Bronte. A. C. Swin- 
burne. 

1 88 1. Three Great Englishwomen. P. Day tie. 
MS. Lecture on Emily Bronte. T. Wemyss 

Reid. 
MS. Notes on Emily and Charlotte 

Bronte. Miss Ellen Nussey. 
MS. Letters of Charlotte and Bran well 
Brontii. 

1879. Reminiscences of the Brontes. Miss Ellen 
Niissey. 

1870. Unpublished Letters of Charlotte, Em- 
ily, AND Anne Bronte, Hours at Home. 

1846. Emily Bronte's Annotated Copy of her 
Poems. 



viii LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 

1872. Branwell Bronte : in the ' Mirror.' 
G. S. Phillips. 

1879. Pictures of the Past. F. H. Grundy. 

1830. Prospectus of the Clergymen's Daugh- 
ters' School at Cowan's Bridge. 

1850. Preface to 'Wuthering Heights.' Char- 
lotte Bronte. 

Ibid. Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton 
Bell. Charlotte Bronte. 

Ibid. 'Wuthering Heights:' in the 'Palla- 
dium.' Sydney D obeli. 
Personal Reminiscences of Mrs. Wood, 
Mrs. Ratcliffe, Mrs. Brown, and Mr. 
William Wood, of Haworth. 
1811-18. Poems of Patrick Bronte, B.A., Incum- 
bent of Haworth. 

1879. Haworth: Past and Present. J.Horsfall 
Turner. 



EMILY BRONTE, 



INTRODUCTION. 

There are, perhaps, few tests of excellence so 
sure as the popular verdict on a work of art 
a hundred years after its accomplishment. So 
much time must be allowed for the swing and 
rebound of taste, for the despoiling of tawdry- 
splendors and to permit the work of art itself to 
form a public capable of appreciating it. Such 
marvellous fragments reach us of Elizabethan 
praises ; and we cannot help recalling the num- 
ber of copies of * Prometheus Unbound ' sold in 
the lifetime of the poet. We know too well 
" what porridge had John Keats," and remember 
with misgiving the turtle to which we treated 
Hobbs and Nobbs at dinner, and how compla- 
cently we watched them put on their laurels 
afterwards. 

Let us, then, by all means distrust our own 
and the public estimation of all heroes dead 
within a hundred years. Let us, in laying claim 



2 EMILY BRONTE. 

to an infallible verdict, remember how oddly our 
decisions sound at the other side of Time's whis- 
pering-gallery. Shall we therefore pronounce 
only on Chaucer and Shakespeare, on Gower and 
our learned Ben ? Alas ! we are too sure of 
their relative merits ; we stake our reputations 
with no qualms, no battle-ardors. These we 
reserve to them for whom the future is not yet 
secure, for whom a timely word may still be 
spoken, for whom we yet may feel that lancing 
out of enthusiasm only possible when the cast of 
fate is still unknown, and, as we fight, we fancy 
that the glory of our hero is in our hands. 

But very gradually the victory is gained. A 
taste is unconsciously formed for the qualities 
necessary to the next development of art — 
qualities which Blake in his garret, Millet with- 
out the sou, set down in immortal work. At 
last, when the time is ripe, some connoisseur 
sees the picture, blows the dust from the book, 
and straightway blazons his discovery. Mr. 
Swinburne, so to speak, blew the dust from 
* Wuthering Heights ; ' and now it keeps its 
proper rank in the shelf where Coleridge and 
Webster, Hoffmann and Leopardi, have their 
place. Until then, a few brave lines of welcome 
from Sydney Dobell, one fine verse of Mr. 
Arnold's, one notice from Mr. Reid, was all the 
praise that had been given to the book by those 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

in authority. Here and there a mill-girl in the 
West Riding factories read and re-read the tat- 
tered copy from the lending library ; here and 
there some eager, unsatisfied, passionate child 
came upon the book and loved it, in spite of 
chiding, finding in it an imagination that satis- 
fied, and a storm that cleared the air ; or some 
strong-fibred heart felt without a shudder the 
justice of that stern vision of inevitable, inherited 
ruin following the chance-found child of foreign 
sailor and seaport mother. But these readers 
were not many ; even yet the book is not 
popular. 

For, in truth, the qualities that distinguish 
Emily Bronte are not those which are of the 
first necessity to a novelist. She is without ex- 
perience ; her range of character is narrow and 
local ; she has no atmosphere of broad humanity 
like George Eliot ; she has not Jane Austen's 
happy gift of making us love in a book what we 
have overlooked in life ; we do not recognize in 
her the human truth and passion, the never- 
failing serene bitterness of humor, that have 
made for Charlotte Bronte a place between Cer- 
vantes and Victor Hugo. 

Emily Bronte is of a different class. Her 
imagination is narrower, but more intense ; she 
sees less, but what she sees is absolutely pres- 
ent : no writer has described the moors, the 



4 EMILY BRONTE. 

wind, the skies, with her passionate fidelity, 
but this is all of Nature that she describes. 
Her narrow fervid nature accounted as simple 
annoyance the trivial scenes and personages 
touched with immortal sympathy and humor in 
' Villette ' and ' Shirley ; ' Paul Emanuel himself 
appeared to her only as a pedantic and exacting 
taskmaster ; but, on the other hand, to a certain 
class of mind, there is nothing in fiction so mov- 
ing as the spectacle of Heathcliff dying of joy — 
an unnatural, unreal joy — his panther nature 
paralyzed, anianti, in a delirium of visionary 
bliss. 

Only an imagination of the rarest power could 
conceive such a dcnouemeiit, requiting a life of 
black ingratitude by no mere common horrors, 
no vulgar Bedlam frenzy ; but by the torturing 
apprehension of a happiness never quite grasped, 
always just beyond the verge of realization. Only 
an imagination of the finest and rarest touch, 
absolutely certain of tread on that path of a 
single hair which alone connects this world with 
the land of dreams. Few have trod that perilous 
bridge with the fearlessness of Emily Bronte : 
that is her own ground and there she wins our 
highest praise ; but place her on the earth, ask 
her to interpret for us the common lives of the 
surrounding people, she can give no answer. 
The swift and certain spirit moves with the 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

clumsy hesitating gait of a bird accustomed to 
soar. 

She tells us what she saw ; and what she saw 
and what she was incapable of seeing are equally 
characteristic. All the wildness of that moor- 
land, all the secrets of those lonely farms, all 
the capabilities of the one tragedy of passion 
and weakness that touched her solitary life, she 
divined and appropriated : but not the life of 
the village at her feet, not the bustle of the 
mills, the riots, the sudden alternations of wealth 
and poverty, not the incessant rivalry of church 
and chapel ; and while the West Riding has 
known the prototype of nearly every person and 
nearly every place in 'Jane Eyre' and * Shirley,' 
not a single character in 'Wuthering Heights' 
ever climbed the hills round Haworth. 

Say that two foreigners have passed through 
Staffordshire, leaving us their reports of what 
they have seen. The first, going by day, will 
tell us of the hideous blackness of the country, 
but yet more, no doubt, of that awful, patient 
struggle of man with fire and darkness, of the 
grim courage of those unknown lives ; and he 
would see what they toil for, women with little 
children in their arms ; and he would notice the 
blue sky beyond the smoke, doubly precious for 
such horrible environment. But the second trav- 
eller has journeyed through the night ; neither 



6 EMILY BRONTE, 

squalor nor ugliness, neither sky nor children, 
has he seen, only a vast stretch of blackness shot 
through with flaming fires, or here and there 
burned to a dull red by heated furnaces ; and 
before these, strange toilers, half naked, scarcely 
human, and red in the leaping flicker and gleam 
of the fire. The meaning of their work he could 
not see, but a fearful and impressive phantasma- 
goria of flame and blackness and fiery energies 
at work in the encompassing night. 

So differently did the black country of this 
world appear to Charlotte, clear-seeing and com- 
passionate, and to Emily Bronte, a traveller 
through the shadows. Each faithfully recorded 
what she saw, and the place was the same, but 
how unlike the vision ! The spectacles of tem- 
perament color the world very differently for each 
beholder ; and, to understand the vision, we too 
should for a moment look through the seer's 
glass. To gain some such transient glance, to 
gain and give some such momentary insight into 
the character of Emily Bronte, has been the aim 
I have tried to make in this book. That I have 
not fulfilled my desire is perhaps inevitable — 
the task has been left too long. If I have done 
anything at all I feel that muck of the reward is 
due to my many and generous helpers. Fore- 
most among them I must thank Dr. Ingham, my 
kind host at Ilaworth, Mrs. Wood, Mr. William 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

Wood, Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Ratcliffe of that 
parish — all of whom had known the now per- 
ished family of Bronte ; and my thanks are due 
no less to Mr. T. Wemyss Reid, as will be seen 
further on, to Mr. J. H. Ingram, and to Mr. 
Biddell, who have collected much valuable infor- 
mation for my benefit ; and most of all do I owe 
gratitude and thankfulness to Miss Ellen Nussey, 
without whose generous help my work must have 
remained most ignorant and astray. To her, had 
it been worthier, had it been all the subject 
merits, and yet without those shadows of gloom 
and trouble enjoined by the nature of the story; 
to her, could I only have spoken of the high 
noble character of Emily Bronte and not of the 
great trials of her life, I should have ventured to 
dedicate this study. But to Emily's friend I only 
offer what, through her, I have learned of Emily; 
she, who knew so little of Branwell's shames and 
sorrow, is unconcerned with this, their sad and 
necessary record. Only the lights and sunshine 
of my work I dedicate to her. It may be that I 
have given too great a share to the shadows, 
to the manifold follies and failures of Branwell 
Bronte. Yet in Emily Bronte s life the shaping 
influences were so few, and the sins of this be- 
loved and erring brother had so large a share in 
determining the bent of her genius, that to have 
passed them by would have been to ignore the 



8 EMILY BRONTE, 

shock which turned the fantasy of the ' Poems ' 
into the tragedy of ' Wuthering Heights.' It 
would have been to leave untold the patience, 
the courage, the unselfishness, which perfected 
Emily Bronte's heroic character, and to have 
left her burdened with the calumny of having 
chosen to invent the crimes and violence of her 
dramatis personce. Not so, alas ! They were 
but reflected from the passion and sorrow that 
darkened her home ; it was no perverse fancy 
which drove that pure and innocent girl into 
ceaseless brooding on the conquering force of 
sin and the supremacy of injustice. 

She brooded over the problem night and day ; 
she took its difficulties passionately to heart ; in 
the midst of her troubled thoughts she wrote 
* Wuthering Heights.' From the clear spirit 
which inspires the end of her work, we know 
that the storm is over ; we know that her next 
tragedy would be less violent. But we shall 
never see it; for — and it is by this that most 
of us remember her — suddenly and silently she 
died. 

She died, before a single word of worthy praise 
had reached her. She died with her work mis- 
understood and neglected. And yet not un- 
happy. For her home on the moors was very 
dear to her ; the least and homeliest duties 
pleasant ; she loved her sisters with devoted 



INTRODUCTION. g 

friendship, and she had many little happinesses 
in her patient, cheerful, unselfish life. Would 
that I could show her as she was ! — not the 
austere and violent poetess who, cuckoo-fashion, 
has usurped her place ; but brave to fate and 
timid of man ; stern to herself, forbearing to all 
weak and erring things ; silent, yet sometimes 
sparkling with happy sallies. For to represent 
her as she was would be her noblest and most 
fitting monument. 



CHAPTER I. 



PARENTAGE. 



Emily Bronte was born of parents without 
any peculiar talent for literature. It is true 
that her mother's letters are precisely and pret- 
tily written. It is true that her father pub- 
lished a few tracts and religious poems. But in 
neither case is there any vestige of literary or 
poetical endowment. Few, indeed, are the Par- 
ish Magazines which could not show among 
their contents poems and articles greatly supe- 
rior to the weak and characterless effusions of 
the father of the Brontes. The fact seems im- 
portant ; because in this case not one member 
of a family, but a whole family, is endowed in 
more or less degree, with faculties not derived 
from either parent. 

For children may inherit genius from parents 
who are themselves not gifted, as two streaming 
currents of air unite to form a liquid with prop- 
erties different from either ; and never is biog- 
raphy more valuable than when it allows us 
to perceive by what combination of allied quaU- 



PARENTAGE. II 

ties, friction of opposing temperaments, recur- 
rence of ancestral traits, the subtle thing we 
call character is determined. In this case, since, 
as I have said, the whole family manifested a 
brilliance not to be found in either parent, such 
a study would be peculiarly interesting. But, 
unfortunately, the history of the children's father 
and the constitution of the children's mother is 
all that is clear to our investigation. 

Yet even out of this very short pedigree two 
important factors of genius declare themselves 
— two potent and shaping inheritances. From 
their father, Currer, Ellis, and Acton derived a 
strong will ; from their mother, the disease that 
slew Emily and Anne in the prime of their youth 
and made Charlotte always delicate and ailing. 
In both cases the boy, Patrick Branwell, was very 
slightly affected ; but he too died young, from 
excesses that suggest a taint of insanity in his 
constitution. 

Insanity and genius stand on either side con- 
sumption, its worse and better angels. Let 
none call it impious or absurd to rank the 
greatest gift to mankind as the occasional result 
of an inherited tendency to tubercular disease. 
There are of course very many other determin- 
ing causes ; yet is it certain that inherited 
scrofula or phthisis may come out, not in these 
diseases, or not only in these diseases, but in an 



12 EMILY BRONTE. 

alteration, for better or for worse, of the condi- 
tion of the mind. Out of evil ^ood may come, 
or a worse evil. 

The children's father was a nervous, irritable, 
and violent man, who endowed them with a ner- 
vous organization easily disturbed and a*n in- 
domitable force of volition. The girls, at least, 
showed both these characteristics. Patrick 
Branwell must have been a weaker, more bril- 
liant, more violent, less tenacious, less upright 
copy of his father ; and seems to have suffered 
no modification from the patient and steadfast 
moral nature of his mother. She was the model 
that her daughters copied, in different degrees, 
both in character and health. Passion and will 
their father gave them. Their genius came 
directly from neither parent, but from the con- 
stitution of their natures. 

In addition, on both sides, the children got a 
Celtic strain ; and this is a matter of signifi- 
cance, meaning a predisposition to the supersti- 
tion, imagination, and horror that is a strand in 
all their work. Their mother, Maria Branwell, 
was of a good middle-class Cornish family, long 
established as merchants in Penzance. Their 
father was the son of an Irish peasant, Hugh 
Prunty, settled in the north of Ireland, but 
native to the south. 

The history of the Rev. Patrick Bronte. B.A. 



PARENTAGE. 1 3 

(whose fine Greek name, shortened from the 
ancient Irish appellation of Bronterre, was so 
naively admired by his children), is itself a re- 
markable and interesting story. 

The Reverend Patrick Bronte was one of the 
ten children of a peasant proprietor at Ahaderg 
in county Down. The family to which he be- 
longed inherited strength, ^ood looks, and a few 
scant acres of potato-growing soil. They must 
have been very poor, those ten children, often 
hungry, cold, and wet ; but these adverse influ- 
ences only seemed to brace the sinews of Patrick 
Prunty and to nerve his determination to rise 
above his surroundings. He grew up a tall and 
strong young fellow, unusually handsome, with 
a well-shaped head, regular profile, and fine blue 
eyes. A vivacious, impressible manner effectu- 
ally masked a certain selfishness and rigor of 
temperament which became plain in after years. 
He seemed a generous, quick, impulsive lad. 
When he was sixteen years of age Patrick left 
his father's roof, resolved to earn a position for 
himself. At Drumgooland, a neighboring ham- 
let, he opened what is called in Ireland a public 
school ; a sort of hedge-school for village chil- 
dren. He stuck to his trade for five or six 
years, using his leisure to perfect himself in 
general knowledge, mathematics, and a smatter- 
ing of Greek and Latin. 



14 



EMILY BRONTE. 



His efforts deserved to be crowned with suc- 
cess. The Rev. Mr. Tighe, the clergyman of 
the parish, was so struck with Patrick Prunty's 
determination and ability that he advised him 
to try for admittance at one of the EngHsh uni- 
versities ; and when the young man was about 
five-and-twenty he went, with Mr. Tighe's help, 
to Cambridge, and entered at St. John's. 

He left Ireland in July, 1802, never to visit it 
again. He never cared to look again on the 
scenes of his early struggle. He never found 
the means to revisit mother or home, friends or 
country. Between Patrick Bronte, proud of his 
Greek profile and his Greek name, the hand- 
some undergraduate at St. John's, and the nine 
shoeless, hungry young Pruntys of Ahaderg, 
there stretched a distance not to be measured 
by miles. Under his warm and passionate ex- 
terior a fixed resolution to get on in the world was 
hidden ; but, though cold, the young man was 
just and self-denying, and as long as his mother 
lived she received twenty pounds a year, spared 
with difficulty from his narrow income. 

Patrick Bronte stayed four years at Cam- 
bridge ; when he left he had. dropped his Irish 
accent and taken his B.A. On leaving St. 
John's he \vas ordained to a curacy in Essex. 

The young man's energy, of the sort that only 
toils to reach a given personal end, had carried 



PARENTAGE. 



15 



him far on the way to success. At twenty, 
hedge-schoolmaster at Drumgooland, Patrick 
Bronte was at thirty a respectable clergyman 
of the Church of England, with an assured posi- 
tion and respectable clerical acquaintance. He 
was getting very near the goal. 

He did not stay long in Essex. A better 
curacy was offered to him at Hartshead, a little 
village between Huddersfield and Halifax in 
Yorkshire. While he was at Hartshead the 
handsome inflammable Irish curate met Maria 
Branwell at her uncle's parsonage near Leeds. 
It was not the first time that Patrick Bronte had 
fallen in love ; people in the neighborhood used 
to smile at his facility for adoration, and thought 
it of a piece with his enthusiastic character. 
They were quite right ; in his strange nature 
the violence and the coldness were equally gen- 
uine, both being a means to gratify some per- 
sonal ambition, desire, or indolence. It is not an 
uncommon Irish type ; self-important, upright, 
honorable, yet with a bent towards subtlety : 
abstemious in habit, but with freaks of violent 
self-indulgence ; courteous and impulsive to- 
wards strangers, though cold to members of the 
household ; naturally violent, and often assuming 
violence as an instrument of authority ; selfish 
and dutiful ; passionate, and devoid of intense 
affection. 



1 6 EMILY BRONTE. 

Miss Branwell was precisely the little person 
with whom it was natural that such a man, a 
self-made man, should fall in love. She was 
very small, quiet and gentle, not exactly pretty, 
but elegant and ladylike. She was, indeed, a 
well-educated young lady of good connections ; 
a very Phoenix she must have seemed in the 
eyes of a lover conscious of a background of 
Pruntyism and potatoes. She was about twenty- 
one and he thirty-five when they first met in the 
early summer of 1812. They were engaged in 
August. Miss Branwell's letters reveal a quiet 
intensity of devotion, a faculty of judgment, a 
willingness to forgive passing slights, that must 
have satisfied the absolute and critical temper 
of her lover. Under the devotion and the quiet- 
ness there is, however, the note of an indepen- 
dent spirit, and the following extract, with its 
capability of self-reliance and desire to rely upon 
another, reminds one curiously of passages in her 
daughter Charlotte's writings : 

"For some years I have been perfectly my 
own mistress, subject to no control whatever ; 
so far from it that my sisters, who are many 
years older than myself, and even my dear 
mother used to consult me on every occasion of 
importance, and scarcely ever doubted the pro- 
priety of my words and actions : perhaps you 
will be ready to accuse me of vanity in mention- 



PARENTAGE. 17 

ing this, but you must consider that I do not 
boast of it. I have many times felt it a dis- 
advantage, and although, I thank God, it has 
never led me into error, yet in circumstances 
of uncertainty and doubt I have deeply felt the 
want of a guide and instructor." 

Years afterwards, when Maria Branwell's let- 
ters were given into the hands of her daughter 
Charlotte and that daughter's most dear and 
faithful friend, the two young women felt a keen 
pang of retrospective sympathy for the gentle, 
independent little person who, even before her 
marriage, had time to perceive that her guide and 
instructor was not the infallible Mentor she had 
thought him as the first. I quote the words of 
Charlotte's friend, of more authority and weight 
on this matter than those of any other person 
living, taken from a manuscript which she has 
placed at my disposal : 

" Miss Branwell's letters showed that her en- 
gagement, though not a prolonged one, was not 
as happy as it ought to have been. There was a 
pathos of apprehension (though gently expressed) 
in part of the correspondence lest Mr. Bronte 
should cool in his affection towards her, and the 
readers perceived with some indignation that 
there had been a just cause for this apprehen- 
sion. Mr. Bronte, with all his iron strength 
and power of will, had his weakness, and one 



1 8 EMILY BRONTE. 

which, wherever it exists, spoils and debases the 
character — he 'h^id personal vanity. Miss Bran- 
well's finer nature rose above such weakness ; 
but she suffered all the more from evidences of 
it in one to whom she had given her affections 
and whom she was longing to look up to in all 
things." 

On the 29th of December, 18 12, this disillu- 
sioned, loving little lady was married to Patrick 
Bronte, from her uncle's parsonage near Leeds. 
The young couple took up their abode at Harts- 
head, Mr. Bronte's curacy. Three years after- 
wards they moved, with two little baby girls, 
Maria and Elizabeth, to a better living at Thorn- 
ton. The country round is desolate and bleak ; 
great winds go sweeping by ; young Mrs. Bronte, 
whose husband generally sat alone in his study, 
would have missed her cheerful home in sunny 
Penzance (being delicate and prone to supersti- 
tion), but that she was a patient and uncomplain- 
ing woman, and she had scant time for thought 
among her many cares for the thick-coming lit- 
tle lives that peopled her Yorkshire home. In 
1 8 16 Charlotte Bronte was born. In the next 
year Patrick Bran well. In 1818 Emily Jane. 
In 18 19 Anne. Then the health of their deli- 
cate and consumptive mother began to break. 
After seven years' marriage and with six young 
children, Mr. and Mrs. Bronte moved on the 



PARENTAGE. 19 

25th of February, 1820, to their new home at 
Haworth Vicarage. 

The village of Haworth stands, steep and gray, 
on the topmost side of an abrupt low hill. Such 
hills, more steep than high, are congregated 
round, circle beyond circle, to the utmost limit of 
the horizon. Not a wood, not a river. As far as 
eye can reach these treeless hills, their sides cut 
into fields by gray walls of stone, with here and 
there a gray stone village, and here and there 
a gray stone mill, present no other colors than 
the singular north-country brilliance of the 
green grass, and the blackish gray of the stone. 
Now and then a toppling, gurgling mill-beck 
gives life to the scene. But the real life, the 
only beauty of the country, is set on the top of 
all the hills, where moor joins moor from York- 
shire into Lancashire, a coiled chain of wild, free 
places. White with snow in winter, black at mid- 
summer, it is only when spring dapples the dark 
heather-stems with the vivid green of the sprout- 
ing whortleberry bushes, only when in early 
autumn the moors are one humming mass of 
fragrant purple, that any beauty of tint lights up 
the scene. But there is always a charm in the 
moors for hardy and solitary spirits. Between 
them and heaven nothing dares to interpose. 
The shadows of the coursing clouds alter the 
aspect of the place a hundred times a day. A 



20 EMILY BRONTE. 

hundred little springs and streams well in its 
soil, making spots of livid greenness round their 
rise. A hundred birds of every kind are flying 
and singing there. Larks sing ; cuckoos call ; 
all the tribes of linnets and finches twitter in 
the bushes ; plovers moan ; wild ducks fly past ; 
more melancholy than all, on stormy days, the 
white sea-mews cry, blown so far inland by the 
force of the gales that sweep irresistibly over 
the treeless and houseless moors. There in the 
spring you may take in your hands the weak, 
halting fledglings of the birds ; rabbits and 
game multiply in the hollows. There in the 
autumn the crowds of bees, mad in the heather, 
send the sound of their humming down the vil- 
lage street. The winds, the clouds, Nature and 
life, must be the friends of those who would love 
the moors. 

But young Mrs. Eronte never could go on 
the moors. She was frail and weak, poor woman, 
when she came to live in the oblong gray stone 
parsonage on the windy top of the hill. The 
village ran sheer down at her feet; but she 
could not walk down the steep rough-paven 
street, nor on the pathless moors. She was very 
ill and weak ; her husband spent nearly all his 
time in the study, writing his poems, his tracts, 
and his sermons. She had no companions but 
the children. And when, in a very few months, 



PARENTAGE. 21 

she found that she was sickening of a cancer, 
she could not bear to see much of the children 
that she must leave so soon. 

Who dare say if that marriage was happy ? 
Mrs. Gaskell, writing in the life and for the eyes 
of Mr. Bronte, speaks of his unwearied care, his 
devotion in the night-nursing. But before that 
fatal illness was declared, she lets fall many a 
hint of the young wife's loneliness during her 
husband's lengthy, ineffectual studies ; of her 
patient suffering of his violent temper. She 
does not say, but we may suppose, with what 
inward pleasure Mrs. Bronte witnessed her 
favorite silk dress cut into shreds because her 
husband's pride did not choose that she should 
accept a gift ; or watched the children's colored 
shoes thrown on the fire, with no money in her 
purse to get new ones ; or listened to her hus- 
band's cavil at the too frequent arrival of his 
children ; or heard the firing of his pistol-shots 
at the out-house doors, the necessary vent of a 
passion not to be wreaked in words. She was 
patient, brave, lonely, and silent. But Mr. 
Wemyss Reid, who has had unexampled facili- 
ties for studying the Bronte papers, does not 
scruple to speak of Mr. Bronte's "persistent 
coldness and neglect" of his wife, his " stern and 
peremptory " dealings with her, of her " habitual 
dread of her lordly master ; " and the manuscript 



22 EMILY BRONTE, 

which I have once already quoted alludes to the 
"hard and inflexible will which raised itself 
sometimes into tyranny and cruelty." It is 
within the character of the man that all this 
should be true. Safely wed, the woman to 
whom he had made hot love would experience 
no more of his impulsive tenderness. He had 
provided for her and done his duty ; her duty 
was to be at hand when he needed her. Yet, 
imminent death once declared, all his upright- 
ness, his sense of honor, would call on him 
to be careful to the creature he had vowed to 
love and cherish, all his selfishness would oblige 
him to try and preserve the mother of six little 
children under seven years of age. " They kept 
themselves very close," the village people said ; 
and at least in this last illness the husband and 
wife were frequently together. Their love for 
each other, new revived and soon to close, 
seemed to exclude any thought of the children. 
We hear expressly that Mr. Bronte, from natural 
disinclination, and Mrs. Bronte, from fear of- 
agitation, saw very little of the small earnest 
babies who talked politics together in the " chil- 
dren's study," or toddled hand in hand over the 
neighboring moors. 

Meanwhile the young mother grew weaker 
day by day, suffering great pain and often un- 
able to move. But repining never passed her 



PARENTAGE. 



23 



lips. Perhaps she did not repine. Perhaps she 
did not grieve to quit her harassed hfe, the 
children she so seldom saw, her constant pain, 
the husband ''not dramatic enough in his per- 
ceptions to see how miserable others might be 
in a life that to him was all-sufficient." ^ For 
some months she lay still, asking sometimes 
to be lifted in bed that she might watch the 
nurse cleaning the grate, because she- did it as 
they did in Cornwall. For some months she 
suffered more and more. In September, 1821, 
she died. 

1 Mrs. Gaskell. 



CHAPTER II. 



BABYHOOD. 



After his wife's deatli the Rev. Mr. Bronte's 
Hfe grew yet more secluded from ordinary 
human interests. He was not intimate with his 
parishioners ; scarcely, more intimate with his 
children. He was proud of them when they 
said anything clever, for, in spite of their baby- 
hood, he felt at such moments that they were 
worthy of their father ; but their forlorn infancy, 
their helpless ignorance, was no appeal to his 
heart. Some months before his wife's death he 
had begun to take his dinner alone, on account 
of his delicate digestion ; and he continued the 
habit, seeing the children seldom except at 
breakfast and tea, when he would amuse the 
elders by talking Tory politics with them, and 
entertain the baby, Emily, with his Irish tales 
of violence and horror. Perhaps on account of 
this very aloofness, he always had a great influ- 
ence over the children ; he did not care for any 
dearer relation. 

His empty days were filled with occasional 



BABYHOOD. 



25 



visits to some sick person in the village ; with 
long walks alone over the moors, and with the 
composition of his * Cottage in the Wood ' and 
those grandiloquent sermons which still linger 
in the memory of Haworth. Occasionally a 
clergyman from one of the neighboring villages 
would walk over to see him ; but as Mrs. Bronte 
had died so soon after her arrival at Haworth 
their wives never came, and the Bronte children 
had no playfellows in the vicarages near ; nor 
were they allowed to associate with the village 
children. 

This dull routine life suited Mr. Bronte. He 
had labored for many years and now he took 
his repose. We get no further sign of the im- 
patient energies of his youth. He had changed, 
developed ; even as those sea-creatures develop, 
who, having in their youth fins, eyes, and sensi- 
tive feelers, become, when once they find their 
resting-place, motionlessly attached to it, losing, 
one after the other, sight, movement, and even 
sensation, everything but the faculty to adhere. 

Meanwhile the children were left alone. For 
sympathy and amusement they only had each 
other to look to ; and never were brother and 
sisters more devoted. Maria, the eldest, took 
care of them all — she was an old-fashioned, 
motherly little girl ; frail and small in appear- 
ance, with thoughtful, tender ways. She was 



26 EMILY BRONTE. 

very careful of her five little ones, this seven- 
year-old mother of theirs, and never seems to 
have exerted the somewhat tyrannic authority 
usually wielded by such youthful guardians. 
Indeed, for all her seniority, she was the untidy 
one of the family herself ; it was against her 
own faults only that she was severe. She must 
have been a very attaching little creature, with 
her childish delinquencies and her womanly 
cares ; protecting her little family with gentle 
love, and discussing the debates in ParHament 
with her father. Charlotte remembered her to 
the end of her life with passionate, clinging 
affection, and has left us her portrait in the 
pathetic figure of Helen Burns. 

This delicate, weak-chested child of seven was 
the head of the nursery. Then came Elizabeth, 
less clearly individualized in her sisters' mem- 
ory. She also bore in her tiny body the seeds 
of fatal consumption. Next came impetuous 
Charlotte, always small and pale. Then red- 
headed, talkative Patrick Branwell. Lastly 
Emily and Anne, mere babies, toddling with 
difficulty over the paven path to the moors. 

Such a family demanded the closest care, the 
most exact attention. This was perhaps impos- 
sible on an income of £200 a year, when the 
mother lay up-stairs dying of a disease that re- 
quired constant nursing. Still the conditions of 



BABYHOOD. 2/ 

the Brontes' youth were unnecessarily unhealthy. 
It could not be helped that these delicate chil- 
dren should live on the bleak wind-swept hill 
where consumption is even now a scourge ; it 
could not be helped that their home was bounded 
on two sides by the village graveyard ; it could 
not be helped that they were left without a 
mother in their babyhood ; but never, short of 
neglect, were delicate children less considered. 

The little ones, familiar with serious illness 
in the house, expected small indulgence. They 
were accustomed to think nothing so necessary 
as that they should amuse themselves in quiet, 
and keep out of the way. The lesson learned 
so young remained in the minds of the five sis- 
ters all their lives. From their infancy they 
were retired and good ; it was only Patrick 
Branwell who sometimes showed his masculine 
independence by a burst of natural naughtiness. 
They were the quietest of children by nature 
and necessity. The rooms at Haworth Parsonage 
were small and few. There were in front two 
moderate-sized parlors looking on the garden, 
that on the right being Mr. Bronte s study, and 
the larger one opposite the family sitting-room. 
Behind these was a sort of empty store-room 
and the kitchens. On the first floor there was 
a servants' room, where the two servants slept, 
over the back premises ; and a bedroom over 



28 EMILY BRONTE. 

each of the parlors. Between these and over 
the entrance passage was a tiny slip of a room, 
scarcely larger than a linen-closet, scarcely wider 
than the doorway and the window-frame that 
faced each other at either end. During the last 
months of Mrs. Bronte's illness, when it became 
necessary that she should have a bedroom to 
herself, all the five little girls were put to sleep 
in this small and draughty closet, formerly the 
children's study. There can scarcely have been 
room to creep between their beds. Very quiet 
they must have been ; for any childish play 
would have disturbed the dying mother on the 
one side, and the anxious, irritable father on thfi 
other. And ^11 over the house they must keep 
the same hushed calm, since the low stone- 
floored rooms would echo any noise. Very 
probably they were not unhappy children for all 
their quietness. They enjoyed the most abso- 
lute freedom, dearest possession of childhood. 
When they were tired of reading the papers 
(they seemed to have had no children's books)^ 
or of discussing the rival merits of Bonaparte 
and the Duke of Wellington, they were free to 
go along the paven way over the three fields at 
the back, till the last steyle-hole in the last 
stone wall let them through on to the wide and 
solitary moors. There in all weathers they 
might be found ; there they passed their happi- 
est hours, uncontrolled as the birds overhead. 



BABYHOOD, 29 

One rule seems to have been made by their 
father for the management of these precocious 
children with their consumptive taint, with their 
mother dying of cancer — that one rule of Mr. 
Bronte's making, still preserved to us, is that 
the children should eat no meat. The Rev. 
Patrick Bronte, B.A., had grown to heroic pro- 
portions on potatoes ; he knew no reason why 
his children should fare differently. 

The children never grumbled ; so Mrs. Bronte's 
sick-nurse told Mrs. Gaskell : 

'* You would not have known there was a 
child in the house, they were such still, noise- 
less, good little creatures. Maria would shut 
herself up in the children's study with a news- 
paper and be able to tell one everything when 
she came out ; debates in Parliament, and I 
don't know what all. She was as good as a 
mother to her sisters and brother. But there 
never were such good children. I used to think 
them spiritless, they were so different to any 
children I had ever seen. In part, I set it down 
to a fancy Mr. Bronte had of not letting them 
have flesh-meat to eat. It was from no wish 
for saving, for there was plenty and even waste 
in the house, with young servants and no mis- 
tress to see after them ; but he thought that 
children should be brought up simply and hard- 
ily : so they had nothing but potatoes for their 



30 EMILY BRONTE. 

dinner ; but they never seemed to wish for any- 
thing else. They were good little creatures. 
Emily was the prettiest." 

This pretty Emily of two years old was no 
mother's constant joy. That early shaping ten- 
derness, those recurring associations of reverent 
love, must be always missing in her memories. 
Rememberinsf her earliest childhood, she would 
recall a constant necessity of keeping joys and 
sorrows quiet, not letting others hear; she would 
recall the equal love of children for each other, 
the love of the only five children she knew in 
all the world ; the free wide moors where she 
might go as she pleased, and where the rabbits 
played and the moor-game ran and the wild 
birds sang and flew. 

Mrs. Bronte s death can have made no great 
difference to any of her children save Maria, 
who had been her constant companion at Thorn- 
ton ; friendly and helpful as a little maiden of 
six can be to the worried, delicate mother of 
many babies. Emily and Anne would barely 
remember her at all. Charlotte could only just 
recall the image of her mother playing with 
Patrick Branwell one twilight afternoon. An 
empty room, a cessation of accustomed business, 
their mother's death can have meant little more 
than that to the younger children. 

For about a year they were left entirely to 



BABYHOOD. 3"l 

their own devices, and to the rough care of 
kind-hearted, busy servants. They devised plays 
about great men, read the newspapers, and wor- 
shipped the Duke of WelUngton, strolled over 
the moors at their own sweet will, knowing and 
caring absolutely for no creature outside the 
walls of their own home. To these free, hardy, 
independent little creatures Mr. Bronte an- 
nounced one morning that their maiden aunt 
from Cornwall, their mother's eldest sister, was 
coming to superintend their education. 

** Miss Branwell was a very small, antiquated 
little lady. She wore caps large enough for 
half-a-dozen of the present fashion, and a front 
of light auburn curls over her forehead. She 
always dressed in silk. She had a horror of the 
climate so far north, and of the stone floors in 
the Parsonage. . . . She talked a great deal of 
her younger days — the gayeties of her dear 
native town Penzance, the soft, warm climate, 
&c. She gave one the idea that she had been 
a belle among her own home acquaintance. 
She took snuff out of a very pretty gold snuff- 
box, which she sometimes presented to you with 
a little laugh, as if she enjoyed the slight shock 
of astonishment visible in your countenance. 
. . . She would be very lively and intelligent, 
and tilt arguments against Mr. Bronte without 
fear." 



32 EMILY BRONTE. 

So Miss Ellen Nussey recalls the elderly, 
prim Miss Branwell about ten years later than 
her first arrival in Yorkshire. But it is always 
said of her that she changed very little. Miss 
Nussey's striking picture will pretty accurately 
represent the maiden lady of forty, who, from 
a stringent and noble sense of duty, left her 
southern, pleasant home to take care of the 
little orphans running wild at Haworth Parson- 
age. It is easy to imagine with what horrified 
astonishment aunt and nieces must have re- 
garded each other's peculiarities. 

It was, no doubt, an estimable advantage for 
the children to have some related lady in au- 
thority over them. Henceforth their time was 
no longer free for their own disposal. They said 
lessons to their father, they did sewing with 
their aunt, and learned from her all housewifely 
duties. The advantage would have been a 
blessing had their aunt been a woman of sweet- 
natured, motherly turn ; but the change from 
perfect freedom to her old-maidish discipline was 
not easy to bear — a bitter good, a strengthen- 
ing but disagreeable tonic, making the children 
yet less expansive, yet more self-contained and 
silent. Patrick Branwell was the favorite with 
his aunt, the naughty, clever, brilliant, rebel- 
lious, affectionate Patrick. Next to him she 
always preferred the pretty, gentle baby Anne, 



BABYHOOD. 33 

with her sweet, clinging ways, her ready sub- 
mission, her large blue eyes, and clear pink-and- 
white complexion. Charlotte, impulsive, obsti- 
nate, and plain, the rugged, dogged Emily, were 
not framed to be favorites with her. Many a 
fierce tussle of wills, many a grim listening to 
over-frivolous reminiscence, must have shown 
the aunt and her nieces the difference of their 
natures. Maria, too, the whilom head of the 
nursery, must have found submission hard ; but 
hers was a singularly sweet and modest nature. 
Of Elizabeth but little is remembered. 

Mr. Bronte, now that the children were grow- 
ing out of babyhood, seems to have taken a 
certain pride in them. Probably their daily les- 
sons showed him the character and talent hidden 
under those pale and grave little countenances. 
In a letter to Mrs. Gaskell he recounts instances 
of their early talent. More home-loving fathers 
will smile at the simple yet theatric means he 
took to discover the secret of his children's real 
dispositions. 'Twas a characteristic inspiration, 
worthy the originator of the ancient name of 
Bronte. A certain simplicity of confidence in 
his own subtlety gives a piquant flavor to the 
manner of teUing the tale : 

"A circumstance now occurs to my mind 
which I may as well mention. When my chil- 
dren were very young, when, as far as I can 
3 



34 EMILY BRONTE. 

remember, the eldest was about ten years of age 
and the youngest four, thinking that they knew 
more than I had yet discovered, in order to 
make them speak with less timidity, I deemed 
that if they were put under a sort of cover I 
might gain my end ; and happening to have a 
mask in the house I told them all to stand and 
speak boldly from under cover of the mask. 

" I began with the youngest (Anne, afterwards 
Acton Bell), and asked what a child like her 
most wanted; she answered, * Age and expe- 
rience.' I asked the next (Emily, afterwards 
Ellis Bell) what I had best do with her brother 
Bran well, who sometimes was a naughty boy ; 
she answered, * Reason with him ; and when he 
won't listen to reason whip him.' I asked Bran- 
well what was the best way of knowing the 
difference between the intellects of men and 
women ; he answered, ' By considering the dif- 
ference between them as to their bodies.' I 
then asked Charlotte what was the best book in 
the world ; she answered, * The Bible.' And 
what was the next best ; she answered, ' The 
book of Nature.' I then asked the next (Eliza- 
beth, who seems to have taken Miss Branwell's 
teaching to heart) what was the best mode of 
education for a woman ; she answered, ' That 
which would make her rule her house well.' 
Lastly, I asked the oldest what was the best 



BABYHOOD. 



35 



mode of spending time ; she answered^ ' By lay- 
ing it out in preparation for a happy eternity.' 
I may not have given precisely their words, but 
I have nearly done so, as they have made a deep 
and lasting impression on my memory. The 
substance, however, was exactly what I have 
stated." 

The severely practical character of Emily's 
answer is a relief from the unchildish philosophy 
of Branwell, Maria, and the baby. A child of 
four years old who prefers age and experience 
to a tartlet and some sweets must be an un- 
natural product. But the Brontes seem to have 
had no childhood ; unlimited discussion of de- 
bates, long walks without any playfellows, the 
free perusal of Methodist magazines, this is the 
pabulum of their infancy. Years after, when 
they asked some school-children to tea, the 
clergyman's young daughters had to ask their 
little scholars to teach them how to play. It 
was the first time they had ever cared to try. 

What their childhood had really taught them 
was the value of their father's quaint experi- 
ment. They learned to speak boldly from under 
a mask. Restrained, enforcedly quiet, assuming 
a demure appearance to cloak their passionate 
little hearts, the five sisters never spoke their 
inmost mind in look, word, or gesture. They 
saved the leisure in which they could not play 



36 EMILY BRONTE. 

to make up histories, dramas, and fairy tales, in 
which each let loose, without noise, without fear 
of check, the fancies they never tried to put into 
action as other children are wont to. Charlotte 
wrote tales of heroism and adventure. Emily 
cared more for fairy tales, wild, unnatural, 
strange fancies, suggested no doubt in some 
degree by her father's weird Irish stories. Al- 
ready in her nursery the peculiar bent of her 
genius took shape. 

Meanwhile the regular outer life went on — 
the early rising, the dusting and pudding-making, 
the lessons said to their father, the daily portion 
of sewing accomplished in Miss Branwell's bed- 
room, because that lady grew more and more to 
dislike the flagged flooring of the sitting-room. 
Every day, some hour snatched for a ramble on 
the moors ; peaceful times in summer when the 
little girls took their sewing under the stunted 
thorns and currants in the garden, the clicking 
sound of Miss Branwell's pattens indistinctly 
heard within. Happy times when six children, 
all in all to each other, told wonderful stories in 
low voices for their own entrancement. Then, 
one spring, illness in the house; the children 
suffering a complication of measles and whoop- 
ing-cough. They never had such happy times 
again, for it was thought better that the two 
elders should go away after their sickness ; should 



BABYHOOD. 



37 



get their change of air at some good school. Mr. 
Bronte made inquiries and heard of an insti- 
tution established for clergymen's daughters at 
Cowan's Bridge, a village on the high road be- 
tween Leeds and Kendal. After some demur- 
ring the school authorities consented to receive 
the children, now free from infection, though 
still delicate and needing care. Thither Mr. 
Bronte took Maria and Elizabeth in the July of 
1824. Emily and Charlotte followed in Sep- 
tember. 



CHAPTER III. 



COWANS BRIDGE. 



"It was in the year 1823 that the school for 
clergymen's daughters was first projected. The 
place was only then contemplated as desirable in 
itself, and as a place which might probably be 
feasible at some distant day. The mention of it, 
however, to only two friends in the South having 
met with their warm approbation and a remit- 
tance of £70y an opening seemed to be made for 
the commencement of the work. 

" With this sum in hand, in a reliance upon 
Him who has all hearts at his disposal, and to 
whom belong the silver and the gold, the prem- 
ises at Cowan's Bridge were purchased, the nec- 
essary repairs and additions proceeded with, and 
the school was furnished and opened in the 
spring of 1824. The whole expense of the pur- 
chase and outfit amounted to ;£2,333 lys. 9^. 

"The scanty provision of a large portion of 
the clergy of the Established Church has long 
been a source of regret ; and very efficient means 
have been adopted in various ways to remedy it. 



COIVAA^'S BRIDGE. 39 

The sole object of the Clergy Daughters' School 
is to add, in its measure, to these means, by 
placing a good female education within reach of 
the poorest clergy. And by them the seasonable 
aid thus afforded has been duly appreciated. The 
anxiety and toil which necessarily attend the 
management of such an institution have been 
abundantly repaid by the gratitude which has 
been manifested among the parents of the pupils. 

" It has been a very gratifying circumstance 
that the Clergy Daughters' School has been en- 
abled to follow up the design of somewhat kin- 
dred institutions in London. Pupils have come 
to it as apprentices from the Corporation of the 
Sons of the Clergy; and likewise from the Clergy 
Orphan School, in which the education is of a 
limited nature, and the pupils are not allowed to 
remain after the age of sixteen. 

" The school is situated in the parish of Tun- 
stall, on the turnpike road from Leeds to Kendal, 
between which towns a coach runs daily, and 
about two miles from the town of Kirkby Lons- 
dale. 

"Each pupil pays £14 2i year (half in advance) 
for clothing, lodging, boarding, and educating ; 
£1 entrance towards the expense of books, and 
£s entrance for pelisses, frocks, bonnets, &c., 
which they wear all alike.^ So that the first pay- 

1 It is very much wished that the pupils should wear only 
their school dress during the vacations. 



40 EMILY BRONTE. 

ment which a pupil is required to bring with her 
is ;£ii ; and the subsequent half-yearly payment 
£,J, If French, music, or drawing is learnt, ;£3 a 
year additional is paid for each of these. 

" The education is directed according to the 
capacities of the pupils and the wishes of their 
friends. In all cases the great object in view 
is their intellectual and religious improvement ; 
and to give that plain and useful education which 
may best fit them to return with respectability 
and advantage to their own homes ; or to main- 
tain themselves in the different stations of life 
to which Providence may call them." 

. . . Here comes some explanation of the 
treasurer's accounts. Then the report recom- 
mences : 

" Low as the terms are, it has been distressing 
to discover that in many cases clergymen who 
have applied on behalf of their daughters have 
been unable to avail themselves of the benefits 
of the school from the inadequacy of their means 
to raise the required payments. 

"The projectors' object will not be fully real- 
ized until the means are afforded of reducing the 
terms still lower, jn extreme cases, at the discre- 
tion of the committee. And he trusts that the 
time will arrive when, either by legacies or other- 
wise, the school may be placed within the reach 
of those of the clergy for whom it is specially in- 
tended — namely, the most destitute. 



CO IVAN'S BRIDGE. 4 1 

" The school is open to the whole kingdom. 
Donors and subscribers gain the first attention 
in the recommendation of pupils ; and the only- 
inquiry made upon applications for admission is 
into the really necessitous circumstances of the 
applicant. 

'' There are now ninety pupils in the school 
(the number that can be accommodated) and 
several are waiting for admission. 

" The school is under the care of Mrs. Harben, 
as superintendent, eight teachers, and two under- 
teachers. 

" To God belongs the glory of the degree of 
success which has attended this undertaking, and 
which has far exceeded the most sanguine ex- 
pectations. But the expression of very grateful 
acknowledgment must not be wanting towards 
the many benefactors who have so readily and 
so bountifully rendered their assistance. They 
have their recompense in the constant prayers 
which are offered up from many a thankful heart 
for all who support this institution." 

Thus excellently and moderately runs the 
fourth year's report of the philanthropic Gym- 
nase Moronval, evangelical Dotheboys Hall, fa- 
miliar to readers of *Jane Eyre.' When these 
congratulations were set in type, those horrors 
of starvation, cruelty, and fever were all accom- 
plished which brought death to many children, 



42 



EMILY BRONTE. 



and to those that lived an embittering remem- 
brance of wrong. The two Bronte girls who 
survived their school days brought from them a 
deep distrust of human kindness, a difficult belief 
in sincere affection, not natural to their warm 
and passionate spirits. They brought away yet 
more enfeebled bodies, prone to disease ; they 
brought away the memory of two dear sisters 
dead. "To God be the glory," says the report. 
Rather, let us pray, to the Rev. William Carus 
Wilson. 

The report quoted above was issued six years 
after the autumn in which the little Brontes were 
sent to Cowan's Bridge ; it was not known then 
in what terms one of those pale little girls would 
thank her benefactors, would speak of her ad- 
vantages. She spoke at last, and generations 
of readers have held as filthy rags the righteous- 
ness of that institution, thousands of charitable 
hearts have beat high with indignation at the 
philanthropic vanity which would save its own 
soul by the sufferings of little children's tender 
bodies. Yet by an odd anomaly this ogre bene- 
factor, this Brocklehurst, must have been a zeal- 
ous and self-sacrificing enthusiast, with all his 
goodness spoiled by an imperious love of author- 
ity, an extravagant conceit. 

It was in the first year of the school that the 
little Bronte girls left their home on the moors 



CO PLAN'S BRIDGE. 43 

for Cowan's Bridge. It was natural that as yet 
many things should go wrong and grate in the 
unperfected order of the house ; equally natural 
that the children should fail to make excuses: 
poor little prisoners pent, shivering and starved, 
in an unkind asylum from friends and liberty. 

The school, long and low, more like an unpre- 
tending farmhouse than an institution, forms two 
sides of an oblong. The back windows look out 
on a flat garden about seventy yards across. 
Part of the house was originally a cottage ; the 
longer part a disused bobbin-mill, once turned by 
the stream which runs at the side of the damp, 
small garden. The ground floor was turned into 
school-rooms, the dormitories were above, the 
dining-room and the teachers' room were in the 
cottage at the end. All the rooms were paved 
with stone, low-ceiled, small-windowed ; not such 
as are built for growing children, working in 
large classes together. No board of managers 
would permit the poorest children of our Lon- 
don streets to work in such ill-ventilated school- 
rooms. 

The bobbin-mill, not built for habitation, was, 
no doubt, faulty and insufficient in drainage. 
The situation of the house, chosen for its near- 
ness to the stream, was damp and cold, on a 
bleak, unsheltered plain, picturesque enough in 
summer with the green alders overhanging the 



44 EMILY BRONTE. 

babbling beck, but in winter bitter chill. In this 
dreary house of machines, the place of the ousted 
wheels and springs was taken by ninety hungry, 
growing little human beings, all dressed alike 
in the coarse, ill-fitting garments of charity, all 
taught to look, speak, and think alike, all com- 
mended or held up to reprobation according as 
they resembled or diverged from the machines 
whose room they occupied and whose regular, 
thoughtless movement was the model of their 
life. 

These children chiefly owed their excellent ed- 
ucation, their miserable food and lodging, to the 
exertions of a rich clergyman from Willingdon, 
the nearest village. The Rev. Carus Wilson 
was a person of importance in the neighbor- 
hood \ a person who was looked to in emer- 
gencies, who prided himself on his prudence, 
foresight, and efficiency in helping others. With 
this, none the less a man of real and zealous de- 
sire to do good, an energetic, sentient person 
capable of seeing evils and devising remedies. 
He wished to help : he wished no less that it 
should be known he had helped. Pitying the 
miserable conditions of many of his fellow-work- 
ers, he did not rest till he had founded a school 
where the daughters of the poor clergy should 
receive a fair education at a nominal price. 
When the money for the school was forthcoming, 



COIVAJV'S BRIDGE. 45 

the property was vested in twelve trustees ; Mr. 
Wilson was one. He was also treasurer and 
secretary. Nearly all the work, the power, the 
supervision, the authority of the affair, he took 
upon his shoulders. He was not afraid of work, 
and he loved power. He would manage, he 
would be overseer, he would guide, arrange, and 
counsel. So sure did he feel of his capacity to 
move all springs himself, that he seems to have 
exercised little pains and less discretion in ap- 
pointing his subordinates. Good fortune sent 
him a gentle, wise, and noble woman as super- 
intendent ; but the other teachers were less ca- 
pable, some snappish, some without authority. 
The housekeeper, who should have been chosen 
with the greatest care, since in her hands lay the 
whole management and preparation of the food 
of these growing children, was a slovenly, waste- 
ful woman, taken from Mr. Wilson's kitchen, 
and much believed in by himself. Nevertheless 
to her door must we lay much of the misery of 
'' Lowood." 

The funds were small and somewhat uncer- 
tain. Honor and necessity alike compelled a 
certain economy. Mr. Wilson contracted for 
the meat, flour, and milk, and frequently him- 
self inspected the supplies. But perhaps he did 
not inspect the kitchen. The " Lowood " schol- 
ars had many tales to tell of milk turned sour 



46 EMILY BRONTE. 

in dirty pans ; of burnt porridge with disgusting 
fragments in it from uncleanly cooking vessels ; 
of rice boiled in water from the rain-cask, fla- 
vored with dead leaves, and the dust of the 
roof ; of beef salted when already tainted by de- 
composition ; of horrible resurrection-pies made 
of unappetizing scraps and rancid fat. The meat, 
flour, milk, and rice were doubtless good enough 
when Mr. Wilson saw them, but the starved lit- 
tle school-girls with their disappointed hunger 
had neither the courage to complain nor the 
impartiahty to excuse. For the rest, it was 
not easy to complain to Mr. Wilson. His sour 
evangeUcism led him to the same conclusion as 
the avarice of a less disinterested Yorkshire 
schoolmaster; he would have bade them con- 
quer human nature. Being a very proud man, 
he sought to cultivate humility in others. The 
children were all dressed alike, all wearing in 
summer plain straw cottage bonnets, white 
frocks on Sundays and nankeen in the week ; 
all wearing in winter purple stuff frocks and 
purple pelisses — a serviceable and appropriate 
raiment which should allow no envies, jeal- 
ousies, or flatteries. They should not be vain, 
neither should they be greedy. A request 
for nicer-tasting food would have branded the 
asker with the lasting contempt of the Rev. 
William Carus Wilson, trustee, treasurer, and 



COJVAJV'S BRIDGE. 



47 



secretary. They were to learn that it was 
wrong to like pretty things to wear, nice things 
to eat, pleasant games to play ; these little schol- 
ars taken half on charity. Mr. Wilson was re- 
pulsed by the apple-and-pegtop side of a child's 
nature ; he deliberately ignored it. 

Once in this grim, cold, hungry house of char- 
ity, there was little hope of escape. All letters 
and parcels were inspected by the superinten- 
dent ; no friends of the pupils were allowed in 
the school, except for a short call of ceremony. 
But it is probable that Maria and Elizabeth, 
sent on before, had no thought of warning their 
smaller sisters. So destitute of all experience 
were they, that probably they imagined all 
schools like Cowan's Bridge; so anxious to 
learn, that no doubt they willingly accepted the 
cold, hunger, deliberate unkindness, which made 
their childhood anxious and old. 

The lot fell heaviest on the elder sister, clever, 
gentle, slovenly Maria. The principal lesson 
taught at Cowan's Bridge was the value of 
routine. 

Maria, with her careless ways, ready opinions, 
gentle loving incapacity to become a machine, 
Maria was at discord with every principle of 
Cowan's Bridge. She incurred the bitter re- 
sentment of one of the teachers, who sought 
all means of humiliating and mortifying the 



48 EMILY BRONTE. 

svveet-natured, shiftless little creature. When, 
in September, bright, talkative Charlotte and 
baby Emily came to Cowan's Bridge, they found 
their idolized little mother, their Maria, the butt, 
laughing-stock, and scapegrace of the school. 

Things were better for the two younger ones, 
Charlotte, a bright clever little girl, and Emily, 
the prettiest of the little sisters, " a darling child, 
under five years of age, quite the pet nursling 
of the school." ^ But though at first, no doubt, 
these two babies were pleased by the change 
of scene and the companionship of children, 
trouble was to befall them. Not the mere dis- 
tasteful scantiness of their food, the mere cold 
of their bodies : they saw their elder sister grow 
thinner, paler day by day, no care taken of her, 
no indulgence made for her weakness. The 
poor ill-used, ill-nouriyhed child grew very ill 
without complaining ; but at last even the au- 
thorities at Cowan's Bridge perceived that she 
was dying. They sent for Mr. Bronte in the 
spring of 1825. He had not heard of her illness 
in any of his children's letters, duly inspected 
by the superintendent. He had heard no tales 
of poor food, damp rooms, neglect. He came 
tt) Cowan's Bridge and saw Maria, his clever 
little companion, thin, wasted, dying. The poor 
father felt a terrible shock. He took her home 

i Mrs. Harben to Mrs. Gaskell. 



COIVAAT'S BRIDGE. 



49 



with him, away from the three little sisters who 
strained their eyes to look after her. She went 
home to Haworth. A few days afterwards she 
died. 

Not many weeks after Maria's death, when 
the spring made ** Lowood " bearable, when the 
three saddened little sisters no longer waked 
at night for the cold, no longer lame with bleed- 
ing feet, could walk in the sunshine and pick 
flowers, when April grew into May, an epidemic 
of sickness came over Cowan's Bridge. The 
girls one by one grew weak and heavy, neither 
scolding nor texts roused them now ; instead of 
spending their play-hours in games in the sweet 
spring air, instead of picking flowers or running 
races, these growing children grew all languid, 
flaccid, indolent. There was no stirring them 
to work or play. Increasing illness among the 
girls made even their callous guardians anxious 
at last. Elizabeth Bronte was one of the first 
to flag. It was not the fever that ailed her, the 
mysterious undeclared fever that brooded over 
the house ; her frequent cough, brave spirits, 
clear color, pointed to another goal. They sent 
her home in the care of a servant ; and before 
the summer flushed the scanty borders of flow- 
ers on the newest graves in Haworth church-' 
yard, Elizabeth Bronte was dead, no more to 
hunger, freeze, or sorrow. Her hard life of ten 

4 



50 



EMILY BRONTE. 



years was over. The second of the Bronte 
sisters had fallen a victim to consumption. 

Discipline was suddenly relaxed for those 
remaining behind at Cowan's Bridge. There 
was more to eat, for there were fewer mouths 
to feed ; there was more time to play and walk, 
for there were none to watch and restrain the 
eager children, who played, eat, shouted, ran 
riot, with a certain sense of relief, although they 
knew they were only free because death was in 
the house and pestilence in the air. 

The woody hollow of Cowan's Bridge was 
foggy, unwholesome, damp. The scholars under- 
fed, cramped, neglected. Their strange indo- 
lence and heaviness grew stronger and stronger 
with the spring. All at once forty-five out of 
the eighty girls lay sick of typhus-fever. ^lany 
were sent home only to die, some died at 
Cowan's Bridge. All that could, sent for their 
children home. Among the few who stayed in 
the fever-breeding hollow, in the contaminated 
house, where the odors of pastilles and drugs 
blended with, but could not conquer, the faint 
sickening smell of fever and mortality, among 
these abandoned few were Charlotte and Emily 
Bronte. 

Thanks to the free, reckless life, the sunshine, 
the novel abundance of food, the two children 
did not take the infection. Things, indeed, were 



COIVAN'S BRIDGE. 5 1 

brighter for them now, or would have been, 
could the indignant spirit in these tiny bodies 
have forgiven or forgotten the deaths of their 
two sisters. 

Reform had come to Cowan's Bridge, and 
with swift strides cleared away the old order 
of things. The site was declared unhealthy ; 
the clothing insufficient ; the water fetid and 
brackish. When the doctor who inspected the 
school was asked to taste the daily food of the 
scholars he spat it out of his mouth. Every- 
thing, everything must be altered. It was a 
time of sore and grievous humiliation to Mr. 
Wilson. He had felt no qualms, no doubts ; he 
had worked very hard, he thought things were 
going very well. The accounts were in excel- 
lent order, the education thorough and good, 
the system elaborate, the girls really seemed to 
be acquiring a meek and quiet spirit; and, to 
quote the prospectus, "the great object in view 
is their intellectual and religious improvement." 
Then stepped in unreckoned-with disease, and 
the model institution became a by-word of re- 
proach to the county and the order to which it 
belonged. People, however, were not unjust to 
the influential and wealthy treasurer, trustee, 
and secretary. They admitted his energy, finan- 
cial capacities, and turn for organization. All 
they did was to qualify the rigor of his man- 



52 



EMILY BRONTE. 



agement. He still continued treasurer, but the 
funds were intrusted to a committee. He kept 
his post of inspector, but assistants were ap- 
pointed to share his responsibilities. The school 
was given in charge to a new housekeeper ; 
larger and better rations of food were given o-ut. 
Finally a subscription was set on foot to build 
a better house in a healthier spot. When Char- 
lotte and Emily Bronte went home for the mid- 
summer holidays, reform was in full swing at 
Cowan's Bridge. 

They went home, two out of the four children 
who had left their happy home six months be- 
fore. They went home to find no motherly 
Maria, no sturdy, patient Elizabeth. The walks 
on the moors, the tales under the thorn-trees, 
must henceforth be incomplete. The two elders 
of that little band were no longer to be found 
in house or garden — they lay quiet under a 
large paving-stone close to the vicarage pew at 
church. The three little sisters, the one little 
brother, must have often thought on their quiet 
neighbors when the sermon was very long. 
Thus early familiarized and neighborly with 
death, one of them at least, tall, courageous 
Emily, grew up to have no dreary thoughts of 
it, neither any dreams of a far-off heaven. 

When the holidays were over, the two sisters 
returned to school. Their father, strangely 



CO^VAJV'S BRIDGE. 



53 



enough, had no fear to send them to that fatal 
place. Their aunt, with her two favorites at 
home, was not over-anxious. Charlotte and 
Emily went back to Cowan's Bridge. But be- 
fore the winter they were ill : the damp air, the 
unhealthy site (for as yet the new house was 
not built), brought out the weakness of their 
constitutions. Bearing the elder sisters' fate 
in view, the authorities warned Mr. Bronte, and 
the two children came home to Haworth. 



CHAPTER IV. 



CHILDHOOD. 



The home to which Charlotte and Emily re- 
turned was not a very much more healthy spot 
than that they left ; but it was home. It was 
windy and cold, and badly drained. Mr. Bronte 
was ever striving to stir up his parishioners to 
improve the sanitary conditions of the place ; 
but for many years his efforts were in vain. 
The canny Yorkshire folk were loth to put their 
money underground, and it was hard to make 
them believe that the real cause of the frequent 
epidemics and fevers in Haworth was such as 
could be cured by an effective system of subsoil 
drainage. It was cheaper and easier to lay the 
blame at the doors of Providence. So the par- 
son preached in vain. Well might he preach, 
for his own house was in the thick of the evil. 

**As you left the Parsonage gate you looked 
upon the stonecutter's chipping-shed, which was 
piled with slabs ready for use, and to the ear 
there was the incessant 'chip, chip' of the re- 
cording chisel as it graved in the ' In Memo- 
riams ' of the departed." 



CHILDHOOD. 55 

So runs Miss Nussey's manuscript. She also 
tells of the constant sound of the passing-bell ; 
of the frequent burials in the thronged church- 
yard. No cheerful, healthy home for sensitive, 
delicate children. 

'' From the Parsonage windows the first view 
was the plot of grass edged by a wall, a thorn- 
tree or two, and a few shrubs and currant-bushes 
that did not grow. Next to these was the 
large and half-surrounding churchyard, so full 
of gravestones that hardly a strip of grass could 
be seen in it." 

Beyond this the moors, the wild, barren, tree- 
less moors, that stretch away for miles and miles, 
feeding a few herds of mountain sheep, harbor- 
ing some wild conies and hares, giving a nesting- 
place to the birds of heaven, and, for the use of 
man, neither grain nor pasturage, but quarries of 
stone and piles of peat luridly smouldering up 
there on autumn nights. 

Such is the home to which Emily Bronte clung 
with the passionate love of the Swiss for his 
white mountains, with a homesickness in absence 
that strained the very cords of life. Yet her 
childhood in that motherless home had few of 
the elements of childish happiness, and its busy 
strictness of daily life was saddened by the loss 
of Maria and Elizabeth, dear, never-forgotten 
playfellows. Charlotte, now the eldest of the 



56 EMILY BRONTE, 

family, was only two years older than Emily, but 
her sense of responsibility made her seem quite 
of a different age. It was little Anne who was 
Emily's companion — delicate, shrinking, pretty 
Anne, Miss Branwell's favorite. Anne could 
enter only into the easiest or lightest of her 
sister's moods, and yet she was so dear that 
Emily never sought another friend. So from 
childhood she grew accustomed to keep her own 
confidence upon her deepest thoughts and live- 
liest fancies. 

A quiet regular life — carpet-brushing, sew- 
ing, dusting in the morning. Then some neces- 
sary lessons said to their aunt up-stairs ; then, in 
the evening, while Mr. Bronte wrote his sermons 
in the study and Miss Branwell sat in her bed- 
room, the four children, alone in the parlor, or 
sitting by the kitchen fire, while Tabby, the ser- 
vant, moved briskly about, would write their 
magazines or make their plays. 

There was a great deal about politics still in 
the plays. Mr. Bronte, who took a keen interest 
in the affairs of the world, always told the chil- 
dren the chief public news of the day, and let 
them read what newspapers and magazines they 
could lay hold on. So the little Brontes prattled 
of the Duke of Wellington when other children 
still have Jack the Giant-killer for a hero ; the 
Marquis of Douro was their Prince Charming ; 



CHILDHOOD, 



57 



their Yahoos, the Catholics ; their potent evil 
genii, the Liberal Ministry. 

" Our plays were established," says Charlotte, 
the family chronicler, in her history of the year 
1829: "'Young Men,' June, 1826; 'Our Fel- 
lows,' July, 1827; 'Islanders,' December, 1827. 
These are our three great plays that are not kept 
secret. Emily's and my best plays were estab- 
lished the 1st of December, 1827; the others, 
March, 1828. Best plays mean secret plays ; 
they are very nice ones. All our plays are very 
strange ones. Their nature I need not write on 
paper, for I think I shall always remember them. 
The * Young Men's ' play took its rise from some 
wooden soldiers Branwell had ; * Our Fellows,' 
from ^sop's Fables ; and the ' Islanders,' from 
several events which happened. I will sketch 
out the origin of our plays more explicitly if I 
can. First, ' Young Men.' Papa bought Bran- 
well some wooden soldiers at Leeds ; when papa 
came home it was night, and we were in bed, so 
next morning Branwell came to our door " (the 
little room over the passage : Anne slept with 
her aunt) " with a box of soldiers. Emily and I 
jumped out of bed, and I snatched up one and 
exclaimed, ' This is the Duke of Wellington ! 
This shall be the Duke.' When I had said this, 
Emily likewise took one up and said it should 
be hers ; when Anne came down, she said one 



58 EMILY BRONTE, 

should be hers. Mine was the prettiest of the 
whole, the tallest and the most perfect in every 
part. Emily's was a grave-looking fellow, and 
we called him ' Gravey.' Anne's was a queer 
little thing, much like herself, and we called him 
* Waiting-boy.' Branwell chose his, and called 
him Bonaparte." 

In another play Emily chooses Sir Walter 
Scott, Mr. Lockhart, and Johnny Lockhart as 
her representatives ; Charlotte, the Duke of Wel- 
lington, the Marquis of Douro, Mr. Abernethy, 
and Christopher North. This last personage 
was indeed of great importance in the eyes of 
the children, for Blackwood's Magazine was their 
favorite reading. On their father's shelves were 
few novels, and few books of poetry. The cler- 
gyman's study necessarily boasted its works of 
divinity and reference; for the children there 
were only the wild romances of Southey, the 
poems of Sir Walter Scott, left by their Cornish 
mother, and "some mad Methodist magazines 
full of miracles and apparitions and preternatural 
warnings, ominous dreams and frenzied fanati- 
cism ; and the equally mad letters of Mrs. Eliza- 
beth Rowe from the Dead to the Living," familiar 
to readers of ' Shirley.' To counterbalance all 
this romance and terror, the children had their 
interest in politics and Blackwood's Magazme, 
" the most able periodical there is," says thirteen- 



CHILDHOOD. 59 

year-old Charlotte. They also saw yohii Btcll, 
" a high Tory, very violent, the Leeds Mercury, 
Leeds Lntelligencer, a most excellent Tory news- 
paper," and thus became accomplished fanatics 
in all the burning questions of the day. 

Miss Branwell took care that the girls should 
not lack more homely knowledge. Each took 
her share in the day's work, and learned all de- 
tails of it as accurately as any German maiden 
at her cookery school. Emily took very kindly 
to even the hardest housework ; there she felt 
able and necessary ; and, doubtless, up-stairs, 
grimly listening to prim Miss Branwell's stories 
of bygone gayeties, this awkward, growing girl 
was glad to remember that she too was of im- 
portance to the household, despite her tongue- 
tied brooding. 

The girls fared well enough ; but not so their 
brother. Branwell's brilliant purposelessness, 
Celtic gayety, love of amusement, and light heart 
made him the most charming playfellow, but a 
very anxious charge. Friends advised Mr. Bronte 
to send his son to school, but the peculiar vanity 
which made him model his children's youth in 
all details on his own forbade him to take their 
counsel.* Since he had fed on potatoes, his chil- 
dren should eat no meat. Since he had grown 
up at home as best he might, why should Patrick 
Branwell go to school t Every day the father 



6o EMILY BRONTE. 

gave a certain portion of his time to working 
with his boy ; but a clergyman's time is not his 
own, and often he was called away on parish 
business. Doubtless Mr. Bronte thought these 
tutorless hours were spent, as he would have 
spent them, in earnest preparation of difficult 
tasks. But Branwell, with all his father's super- 
ficial charm of manner, was without the un- 
derlying strength of will, and he possessed, 
unchecked, the temptations to self-indulgence, 
to which his father seldom yielded, counteract- 
ing them rather by an ascetic regimen of life. 
These long afternoons were spent, not in work, 
but in mischievous companionship with the 
wilder spirits of the village, to whom " t' Vicar's 
Patrick" was the standard of brilliant leadership 
in scrapes. 

No doubt their admiration flattered Branwell, 
and he enjoyed the noisy fun they had together. 
Nevertheless he did not quite neglect his sisters. 
Charlotte has said that at this time she loved 
him even as her own soul — a serious phrase 
upon those serious lips. But it was Emily and 
Branwell who were most to each other : bright, 
shallow, exacting brother ; silent, deep-brooding, 
unselfish sister, more anxious to give than to 
receive. In January, 183 1, Charlotte went to 
school at Miss Wooler's, at Roe Head, twenty 
miles away ; and Branwell and Emily were 



CHILDHOOD. 6 1 

thrown yet more upon each other for sympathy 
and entertainment. 

Charlotte stayed a year and a half at school, 
and returned in the July of 1832 to teach Emily 
and Anne what she had learnt in her absence ; 
English-French, English, and drawing was pretty 
nearly all the instruction she could give. Hap- 
pily genius needs no curriculum. Nevertheless 
the sisters toiled to extract their utmost boon 
from such advantages as came within their range. 
Every morning from nine till half-past twelve 
they worked at their lessons ; then they walked 
together over the moors, just coming into flower. 
These moors knew a different Emily to the quiet 
girl of fourteen who helped in the housework and 
learned her lessons so regularly at home. On the 
moors she was gay, frolicsome, almost wild. She 
would set the others laughing with her quaint, 
humorous sallies and genial ways. She was quite 
at home there, taking the fledgling birds in her 
hands so softly that they were not afraid, and 
telling stories to them. A strange figure — tall, 
slim, angular, with all her inches not yet grown ; 
a quantity of dark-brown hair, deep beautiful 
hazel eyes that could flash with passion, features 
somewhat strong and stern, the mouth prominent 
and resolute. ^ 

The sisters, and sometimes Branwell, would 
go far on the moors ; sometimes four miles to 



62 EMILY BRONTE. 

Keighley in the hollow over the ridge, unseen 
from the heights, but brooded over always by a 
dim film of smoke, seemingly the steam rising 
from some fiery lake. The sisters now subscribed 
to a circulating library at Keighley, and would 
gladly undertake the rough walk of eight miles 
for the sake of bringing back with them a novel 
by Scott, or a poem by Southey. At Keighley, 
too, they bought their paper. The stationer used 
to wonder how they could get through so much. 
Other days they went over Stanbury Moor to 
the Waterfall, a romantic glen in the heathy side 
of the hill where a little stream drips over great 
boulders, and where some slender delicate birches 
spring, a wonder in this barren country. This 
was a favorite haunt of Emily, and indeed they 
all loved the spot. Here they would use some 
of their paper, for they still kept up their old 
habit of writing tales and poems, and loved to 
scribble out of doors. And some of it they would 
use in drawing, since at this time they were tak- 
ing lessons, and Emily and Charlotte were de- 
voted to the art : Charlotte making copies with 
minuteness and exact fidelity ; Emily drawing 
animals and still-life with far greater freedom 
and certainty of touch. Some of Charlotte's 
paper, also, must have gone in letter-writing. 
She had made friends at school, an event of great 
importance to that narrow circle. One of these 



CHILDHOOD. 63 

friends, the dearest, was unknown to Haworth. 
Many a time must Emily and Anne have listened 
to accounts of the pretty, accomplished, lively 
girl, a favorite in many homes, who had won the 
heart of their shy plain sister. She was, indeed, 
used to a very different life, this fair young girl, 
but her bright youth and social pleasures did not 
blind her to the fact that oddly dressed, old- 
fashioned Charlotte Bronte was the most remark- 
able person of her acquaintance. She was the 
first, outside Charlotte's home, to discover her 
true character and genius ; and that at an age, 
in a position, when most girls would be too busy 
with visions of a happy future for themselves to 
sympathize with the strange activities, the mor- 
bid sensitiveness, of such a mind as Charlotte 
possessed. But so early this girl loved her ; and 
lives still, the last to have an intimate recollec- 
tion of the ways, persons, and habits of the Bronte 
household. 

In September, 1832, Charlotte left home again 
on a fortnight's visit to the home of this dear 
friend. Branwell took her there. He had prob- 
ably never been from home before. He was 
in wild spirits at the beauty of the house and 
grounds, inspecting, criticising everything, pour- 
ing out a stream of comments, rich in studio 
terms, taking views in every direction of the old 
battlemented house, and choosing " bits " that 



64 EMILY BRONTE. 

he would like to paint, delighting the whole 
family with his bright cleverness and happy 
Irish ways. Meanwhile Charlotte looked on, 
shy and dull. " I leave you in Paradise ! " cried 
Bran well, and betook himself over the moor to 
make fine stories of his visit to Emily and Anne 
in the bare little parlor at Haworth. 

Charlotte's friend, Ellen, sent her home laden 
with apples for her two young sisters : " Elles 
disent qu'elles sont star que IMademoiselle E. est 
tres-aimable et bonne ; I'une et I'autre sont ex- 
tremement impatientes de vous voir; j'espere que 

dans peu de mois elles auront ce plaisir " 

So writes Charlotte in the quaint Anglo-French 
that the friends wrote to each other for practice. 
But winter was approaching, and winter is dreary 
at Haworth. Miss Branwell persuaded the eager 
girls to put off their visitor till summer made the 
moors warm and dry and beautiful, so that the 
young people could spend much of their time out 
of doors. In the summer of 1833 Ellen came to 
Haworth. 

Miss Ellen Nussey is the only person living 
who knew Emily Bronte on terms of intimate 
equality, and her testimony cg.rries out that of 
those humbler friends who helped the parson's 
busy daughter in her cooking and cleaning ; from 
all alike we hear of an active, genial, warm- 
hearted girl, full of humor arid feeling to those 



CHILDHOOD. 



65 



she knew, though shy and cold in her bearing to 
strangers. A different being to the fierce im- 
passioned Vestal who has seated herself in Em- 
ily's place of remembrance. 

In 1833 Emily was nearly fifteen, a tall, long- 
armed girl, full grown, elastic of tread ; with a 
slight figure that looked queenly in her best 
dresses, but loose and boyish when she slouched 
over the moors, whistling to her dogs, and taking 
long strides over the rough earth. A tall, thin, 
loose-jointed girl — not ugly, but with irregular 
features and a pallid thick complexion. Her 
dark-brown hair was naturally beautiful, and in 
later days looked well, loosely fastened with a 
tall comb at the back of her head ; but in 1833 
she wore it in an unbecoming tight curl and 
frizz. She had very beautiful eyes of hazel color. 
" Kind, kindling, liquid eyes," says the friend who 
survives all that household. She had an aquiline 
nose, a large, expressive, prominent mouth. She 
talked little. No grace or style in dress be- 
longed to Emily, but under her awkward clothes 
her natural movements had the lithe beauty of 
the wild creatures that she loved. She was a 
great walker, spending all her leisure on the 
moors. She loved the freedom there, the large 
air. She loved the creatures, too. Never was 
a soul with a more passionate love of Mother 
Earth, of every weed and flower, of every bird, 
5 



66 EMILY BRONTE. 

beast, and insect that lived. She would have 
peopled the house with pets had not Miss Bran- 
well kept her niece's love of animals in due sub- 
jection. Only one dog was allowed, who was 
admitted into the parlor at stated hours, but out 
of doors Emily made friends with all the beasts 
and birds. She would come home carrying in 
her hands some young bird or rabbit, and softly 
talking to it as she came. " Ee, Miss Emily," 
the young servant would say, " one would think 
the bird could understand you." " I am sure 
it can," Emily would answer. " Oh, I am sure it 
can." 

The girls would take their friend long walks 
on the moor. When they went very far, Tabby, 
their old factotum, insisted on escorting them, 
unless Branwell took that duty on himself, for 
they were still " childer " in her eyes. Emily 
and Anne walked together. They and Branwell 
would ford the streams and place stepping-stones 
for the elder girls. At every point of view, at 
every flower, the happy little party would stop 
to talk, admire, and theorize in concert. Emily's 
reserve had vanished as morning mists. She 
was full of glee and gladness, on her own de- 
mesne, no longer awkward and silent. On fine 
days Emily and Anne would persuade the others 
to walk to the Waterfall, which made an island 
of brilliant green turf in the midst of the heather, 



CHILDHOOD. 



67 



set with clear springs, shaded with here and 
there a silver birch, and dotted with gray boul- 
ders, beautiful resting-places. Here the four 
girls — the "quartette" as they called them- 
selves — would go and sit and listen to Ellen's 
stories of the world they had not seen. Or 
Emily, half-reclining on a slab of stone, would 
play like a young child with the tadpoles in the 
water, making them swim about, and she would 
fall to moralizing on the strong and the weak, 
the brave and the cowardly, as she chased the 
creatures with her hand. Having rested, they 
would trudge home again a merry party, save 
when they met some wandering villager. Then 
the parson's three daughters would walk on, 
hushed and timid. 

At nine the sewing was put by, and the four 
girls would talk and laugh, pacing round the 
parlor. Miss Branwell went to bed early, and 
the young people were left alone in the curtain- 
less, clean parlor, with its gray walls and horse- 
hair furniture. But with good company no room 
is poorly furnished ; and they had much to say, 
and much to listen to, on nights when Branwell 
was at home. Oftenest they must have missed 
him ; since, whenever a visitor stayed at the 
" Black Bull," the little inn across the church- 
yard, the landlord would send up for " t' Vicar's 
Patrick" to come and amuse the guests with his 
brilliant rhodomontade. 



68 EMILY BRONTE. 

Not much writing went on in Ellen's presence, 
but gay discussion, making of stories, and serious 
argument. They would talk sometimes of dead 
Maria and Ehzabeth, always remembered with 
an intensity of love. About eight o'clock Mr. 
Bronte would call the household to family pray- 
ers ; and an hour afterwards he used to bolt the 
front door, and go up-stairs to bed, always stop- 
ping at the sitting-room with a kindly admoni- 
tion to the " children " not to be late. At last 
the girls would stop their chatter, and retire for 
the night, Emily giving her bed to the visitor 
and taking a share of the servants' room her- 
self. 

At breakfast the next morning Ellen used to 
listen with shrinking amazement to the stories 
of wild horror that Mr. Bronte loved to relate, 
fearful stories of superstitious Ireland, or bar- 
barous legends of the rough dwellers on the 
moors ; Ellen would turn pale and cold to hear 
them. Sometimes she marvelled as she caught 
sight of Emily's face, relaxed from its company 
rigor, while she stooped down to hand her por- 
ridge-bowl to the dog : she wore a strange ex- 
pression, gratified, pleased, as though she had 
gained something which seemed to complete a 
picture in her mind. For this silent Emily, talk- 
ing little save in rare bursts of wild spirits ; this 
energetic housewife, cooking and cleaning as 



CHILDHOOD. 



69 



though she had no other aim in view than the 
providing for the day's comfort; this was the 
same Emily who at five years of age used to 
startle the nursery with her fantastic fairy sto- 
ries. Two lives went on side by side in her 
heart, neither ever mingling with or interrupt- 
ing the other. Practical housewife with capable 
hands, dreamer of strange horrors : each self was 
independent of the companion to which it was 
linked by day and night. People in those days 
knew her but as she seemed — " t' Vicar's Em- 
ily" — a shy, awkward girl, never teaching in 
the Sunday school like her sisters, never talking 
with the villagers like merry Branwell, but very 
good and hearty in helping the sick and dis- 
tressed : not pretty in the village estimation — 
a " slinky lass," no prim, trim little body like 
pretty Anne, nor with Charlotte Bronte's taste 
in dress; just a clever lass with a spirit of her 
own. So the village judged her. At home they 
loved her with her strong feelings, untidy frocks, 
indomitable will, and ready contempt for the 
common-place ; she was appreciated as a dear 
and necessary member of the household. Of 
Emily's deeper self, her violent genius, neither 
friend nor neighbor dreamed in those days. And 
to-day it is only this Emily who is remembered. 
Days went on, pleasant days of autumn, in 
which Charlotte and her friend roamed across 



70 



EMILY BRONTE. 



the blooming moors, in which Anne and Emily 
would take their little stools and big desks into 
the garden, and sit and scribble under the cur- 
rant-bushes, stopping now and then to pluck the 
ripe fruit. Then came chill October, bringing 
cold winds and rain. Ellen went home, leaving 
an empty chair in the quartette, leaving Char- 
lotte lonelier, and even Emily and Anne a little 
dull. " They never liked any one as well as you," 
says Charlotte. 

Winter came, more than usually unhealthy 
that year, and the moors behind the house 
were impassable with snow and rain. Miss Bran- 
well continually bemoaned the warm and flow- 
ery winters of Penzance, shivering over the fire 
in her bedroom ; Mr. Bronte was ill ; outside the 
air was filled with the mournful sound of the 
passing-bell. But the four young people sitting 
round the parlor hearth-place were not cold or 
miserable. They were dreaming of a happy and 
glorious future, a great career in Art ; not for 
Charlotte, not for Emily or Anne, they were only 
girls ; their dreams were for the hope and prom- 
ise of the house — for Branwell. 



CHAPTER V. 



GOING TO SCHOOL. 



Emily was now sixteen years old, and though 
the people in the village called her " t' cleverest 
o' t' Bronte childer," she had little to show of her 
cleverness. Her education was as home-made 
as her gowns, not such as would give distinction 
to a governess ; and a governess Emily would 
have to be. The Bronte sisters were too severe 
and noble in their theories of life ever to contem- 
plate marriage as a means of livelihood ; but 
even worldly sisters would have owned that there 
was little chance of impatient Emily marrying 
at all. She was almost violent in her dislike of 
strangeifs. The first time that Ellen stayed at 
Haworth, Charlotte was ill one day and could 
not go out with her friend. To their surprise 
Emily volunteered to take the stranger a walk 
over the moors. Charlotte waited anxiously for 
their return, fearing some outbreak of impatience 
or disdain on the part of her untamable sister. 
The two girls at last came home. " How did 
Emily behave ? " asked Charlotte, eagerly, draw- 



72 EMILY BRONTE. 

ing her friend aside. She had behaved well ; she 
had shown her true self, her noble, enersfetic, 
truthful soul, and from that day there was a real 
friendship between the gentle Ellen and the 
intractable Emily ; but none the less does Char- 
lotte's question reveal in how different a manner 
the girl regarded strangers as a rule. In after 
days when the curates, looking for Mr. Bronte 
in his study, occasionally found Emily there in- 
stead, they used to beat such a hasty retreat that 
it was quite an established joke at the Parsonage 
that Emily appeared to the outer world in the 
likeness of an old bear. She hated strange faces 
and strange places. Her sisters must have seen 
that such a temperament, if it made her unlikely 
to attract a husband or to wish to attract one, 
also rendered her lamentably unfit to earn her 
living as a governess. In those days they could 
not tell that the defect was incurable, a congen- 
ital infirmity of nature ; and doubtless Charlotte, 
the wise elder sister, thought she had found a 
cure for both the narrow education and the nar- 
row sympathies when she suggested that Emily 
should go to school. She writes to her friend in 
July, 1835: 

" I had hoped to have had the extreme pleas- 
ure of seeing you at Haworth this summer, but 
human affairs are mutable, and human resolu- 
tions must bend to the course of events. We 



GOING TO SCHOOL. y^ 

are all about to divide, break up, separate. 
Emily is going to school, Branwell is going to 
London, and I am going to be a governess. 
This last determination I formed myself, know- 
ing I should have to take the step sometime, 
and ' better sune as syne,' to use a Scotch prov- 
erb; and knowing well that papa would have 
enough to do with his limited income, should 
Branwell be placed at the Royal Academy and 
Emily at Roe Head. Where am I going to 
reside } you will ask. Within four miles of you, 
at a place neither of us are unacquainted with, 
being no other than the identical Roe Head 
mentioned above. Yes ! I am going to teach 
in the very school where I was myself taught. 
Miss Wooler made me the offer, and I preferred 
it to one or two proposals of private governess- 
ship which I had before received. I am sad — 
very sad — at the thoughts of leaving home ; but 
duty — necessity — these are stern mistresses, 
who will not be disobeyed. Did I not once say 
you ought to be thankful for your independence } 
I felt what I said at the time, and I repeat it 
now with double earnestness ; if anything would 
cheer me it is the idea of being so near you. 
Surely you and Polly will come and see me ; it 
would be wrong in me to doubt it; you were 
never unkind yet. Emily and I leave home on 
the 27th of this month ; the idea of being to- 



74 EMILY BRONTE. 

gether consoles us both somewhat, and, truth, 
since I must enter a situation, * My lines have 
fallen in pleasant places.' I both love and re- 
spect Miss Wooler." ^ 

The wrench of leaving home, so much dreaded 
by Charlotte, was yet sharper to her younger 
sister, morbidly fearful of strangers, eccentric, 
unable to live without wide liberty. To go to 
school ; it must have had a dreadful sound to 
that untamable, free creature, happiest alone with 
the dogs on the moors, with little sentiment or 
instinct for friendship ; no desire to meet her 
fellows. Emily was perfectly happy at Haworth, 
cooking the dinner, ironing the linen, writing 
poems at the Waterfall, taking her dog for miles 
over the moors, pacing round the parlor with her 
arm round gentle Anne's waist. Now she would 
have to leave all this, to separate from her dear 
little sister. But she was reasonable and just, 
and, feeling the attempt should be made, she 
packed up her scanty wardrobe, and, without re- 
pining, set out with Charlotte for Roe Head. 

Charlotte knew where she was going. She 
loved and respected Miss Wooler ; but with what 
anxiety must Emily have looked for the house 
where she was to . live and not to be at home. 
At last she saw it, a cheerful, roomy, country 
house, standing a little apart in a field. There 

1 Mrs. Gaskell. 



GOING TO SCHOOL. 75 

was a wide and pleasant view of fields and 
woods ; but the green prospect was sullied and 
marred by the smoke from the frequent mills. 
Green fields, gray mills, all told of industry, 
labor, occupation. There ^Yas no wild stretch of 
moorland here, no possibility of solitude. I think 
when Emily Bronte saw the place, she must have 
known very well she would not be happy there. 

"My sister Emily loved the moors," says 
Charlotte, writing of these days in the latter sol- 
itude — "flowers brighter than the rose bloomed 
in the blackest of the heath for her ; out of a 
sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could 
make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude 
many and dear delights ; and not the least and 
best-loved was liberty. Liberty was the breath 
of Emily's nostrils ; without it she perished. 
The change from her own home to a school, and 
from her own very noiseless, very secluded, but 
unrestricted and unartificial mode of life to one 
of disciplined routine (though under the kindest 
auspices) was what she failed in enduring. Her 
nature was here too strong for her fortitude. 
Every morning, when she woke, the visions of 
home and the moors rushed on her, and dark- 
ened and saddened the day that lay before her. 
Nobody knew what ailed her but me. I knew 
only too well. In this struggle her health was 
quickly broken : her white face, attenuated form, 



>je EMILY BRONTE. 

and failing strength threatened rapid decline. I 
felt in my heart she would die if she did not 
go home." 

Thus looking on, Charlotte grew alarmed. She 
remembered the death of Maria and Elizabeth, 
and feared, feared with anguish, lest this best- 
beloved sister should follow them. She told Miss 
Wooler of her fear, and the schoolmistress, con- 
scious of her own kindness and a little resentful 
at Emily's distress, consented that the girl should 
be sent home without delay. She did not care 
for Emily, and was not sorry to lose her. So in 
October she returned to Haworth, to the only 
place where she was happy and well. She re- 
turned to harder work and plainer living than 
she had known at school ; but also to home, lib- 
erty, comprehension, her animals, and her flowers. 
In her native atmosphere she very soon recovered 
the health and strength that seemed so natural 
to her swift spirit ; that were, alas, so easily 
endangered. She had only been at school three 
months. 

Even so short an absence may very grievously 
alter the aspect of familiar things. Haworth 
itself was the same ; prim, tidy Miss Branwell 
stilt pattered about in her huge caps and tiny 
clogs; the Vicar still told his horrible stories 
at breakfast, still fought vain battles with the 
parishioners who would not drain the village, 



GOING TO SCHOOL. 77 

and the women who would dry their linen on 
the tombstones. Anne was still as transpar- 
ently pretty, as pensive and pious as of old ; but 
over the hope of the house, the dashing, clever 
Branwell, who was to make the name of Bronte 
famous in art, a dim, tarnishing change had 
come. Emily must have seen it with fresh 
eyes, left more and more in Branwell's company, 
when, after the Christmas holidays, Anne re- 
turned with Charlotte to Roe Head. 

There is in none of Charlotte's letters any 
further talk of sending Branwell to the Royal 
Academy. He earnestly desired to go, and for 
him, the only son, any sacrifice had willingly 
been made. But there were reasons why that 
brilHant, unprincipled lad should not be trusted 
now, alone in London. Too frequent had been 
those visits to the " Black Bull," undertaken, at 
first, to amuse the travellers from London, Leeds^ 
and Manchester, who found their evenings dull. 
The Vicar's lad was following the proverbial 
fate of parsons' sons. Little as they foreboded 
the end in store, greatly as they hoped all his 
errors were a mere necessary attribute of manli- 
ness, the sisters must have read in his shaken 
nerves the dissipation for which their clever 
Branwell was already remarkable in Havvorth. 
It is true that to be sometimes the worse for 
drink was no uncommon fault fifty years ago 



78 EMILY BRONTE. 

in Yorkshire ; but the gradual coarsening of 
Bran well's nature, the growing flippancy, the 
altered health, must have given a cruel awaken- 
ing to his sisters' dreams for his career. In 
1836 this deterioration was at the beginning; 
a weed in bud that could only bear a bitter and 
poisonous fruit. Emily hoped the best ; his 
father did not seem to see his danger ; Miss 
Branwell spoiled the lad ; and the village thought 
him a mighty pleasant young gentleman with a 
smile and a bow for every one, fond of a glass 
and a chat in the pleasant parlor of the " Black 
Bull " at nights ; a gay, feckless, red-haired, 
smiling young fellow, full of ready courtesies 
to all his friends in the village ; yet, none the 
less as full of thoughtless cruelties to his friends 
at home. 

For the rest, he had nothing to do, and was 
scarcely to blame if he could not devote sixteen 
hours a day to writing verses for the Leeds Mer- 
cury, his only ostensible occupation. It seems 
incredible that Mr. Bronte, who well understood 
the peculiar temptations to which his son lay 
open, could have suffered him to loaf about the 
village, doing nothing, month after month, lured 
into ill by no set purpose, but by a weak social 
temper and foolish friends. Yet so it was, and 
with such training, little hope of salvation could 
there be for that vain, somewhat clever, untruth- 
ful, fascinating boy. 



GOING TO SCHOOL. 



79 



So things went on, drearily enough in reality, 
though perhaps more pleasantly in seeming — 
for Branwell, with his love of approbation and 
ready affectionateness, took all trouble consis- 
tent with self-indulgence to avoid the noise of 
his misdemeanors reaching home. Thus things 
went on till Charlotte returned from Miss 
Wooler's with httle Anne in the midsummer 
holidays of 1836. 

An interval of happiness to lonely Emily ; 
Charlotte's friend came to the gray, cold-looking 
Parsonage, enlivening that sombre place with 
her gay youth and sweet looks. Home with 
four young girls in it was more attractive to 
Branwell than the alluring parlor of the " Black 
Bull." The harvest moon that year can have 
looked on no happier meeting. " It would not 
be right," says the survivor of those eager spirits, 
" to pass over one record which should be made 
of the sisters' lives together, after their school- 
days, and before they were broken in health by 
their efforts to support themselves, that at this 
time they had all a taste of happiness and en- 
joyment. They were beginning to feel conscious 
of their powers, they were rich in each other's 
companionship, their health was good, their 
spirits were high, there was often joyousness 
and mirth ; they commented on what they read ; 
analyzed articles and their writers also ; the 



8o EMILY BRONTE. 

perfection of unrestrained talk and intelligence 
brightened the close of the days which were 
passing all too swiftly. The evening march in 
the sitting-room, a constant habit learned at 
school, kept time with their thoughts and feel- 
ings, it was free and rapid ; they marched in 
pairs, Emily and Anne, Charlotte and her friend, 
with arms twined round each other in childlike 
fashion, except when Charlotte, in an exuber- 
ance of spirit, would for a moment start away, 
make a graceful pirouette (though she had never 
learned to dance) and return to her march." 

So the evenings passed, and the days, in 
happy fashion for a little while. Then Charlotte 
and Anne went back to Miss Wooler's, and 
Emily, too, took up the gauntlet against neces- 
sity. She was not of a character to let the 
distastefulness of any duty hinder her from 
undertaking it. She was very stern in her deal- 
ings with herself, though tender to the erring, 
and anxious to bear the burdens of the weak. 
She allowed no one but herself to decide what 
it behoved her to do. She could not see Char- 
lotte labor, and not work herself. At home she 
worked, it is true, harder than servants ; but 
she felt it right not only to work, but to earn. 
So, having recovered her natural strength, she 
left Haworth in September, and Charlotte writes 
from school to her friend : " My sister Emily 



GOING TO SCHOOL. 8 1 

has gone into a situation as teacher in a large 
school near Halifax. I have had one letter from 
her since her departure ; it gives an appalling 
account of her duties ; hard labor from six in 
the morning to eleven at night, with only one 
half-hour of exercise between. This is slavery. 
I fear she can never stand it." 

She stood it, however, all that term ; came 
back to Haworth for a brief rest at Christmas, 
and again left it for the hated life she led, 
drudging among strangers. But when spring 
came back, with its feverish weakness, with its 
beauty and memories, to that stern place of 
exile, she failed. Her health broke down, shat- 
tered by long-resisted homesickness. Weary 
and mortified at heart, Emily again went back 
to seek life and happiness on the wild moors 
of Haworth. 



CHAPTER VI. 



GIRLHOOD AT HAWORTH. 



The next two years passed very solitarily for 
Emily at Haworth ; the Brontes were too poor 
for all to stay at home, and since it was defi- 
nitely settled that Emily could not live away, 
she worked hard at home while her sisters went 
out in the world to gain their bread. She had 
no friend besides her sisters ; far-off Anne was 
her only confidante. Outside her own circle the 
only person that she cared to meet was Char- 
lotte's friend Ellen, and, of course, Ellen did 
not come to Haworth while Charlotte was away. 
Branwell, too, was absent. His first engage- 
ment was as usher in a school ; but, mortified 
by the boys' sarcasms on his red hair and 
" downcast smallness," he speedily threw up his 
situation and returned to Haworth to confide 
his wounded vanity to the tender mercies of the 
rough and valiant Emily, or to loaf about the 
village seeking readier consolation. 

Then he went as private tutor to a family in 
Broughton-in-Furness. One letter of his thence 



GIRLHOOD AT HA WORTH. 83 

despatched to some congenial spirit in Haworth, 
long since dead, has been lent to me by the 
courtesy of Mr. William Wood, one of the last 
of Branwell's companions, in whose possession 
the torn, faded sheet remains. Much of it is 
unreadable from accidental rents and the pur- 
posed excision of private passages, and part of 
that which can be read cannot be quoted ; such 
as it is, the letter is valuable as showing what 
things in life seemed desirable and worthy of 
attainment to this much-hoped-in brother of the 
austere Emily, the courageous Charlotte, the 
pious Anne. 

" Broughton-in-Furness, March 15. 

** Old Knave of Trumps, 

" Don't think I have forgotten you though I 
have delayed so long in writing to you. It was 
my purpose to send you a yarn as soon as I 
could find materials to spin one with. And it 
is only just now I have had time to turn myself 
round and know where I am. 

"If you saw me now you would not know me, 
and you would laugh to hear the character the 
people give me. Oh, the falsehood and hypoc- 
risy of this world ! I am fixed in a little town 
retired by the seashore, embowered in woody 
hills that rise round me, huge, rocky, and capped 
with clouds. My employer is a retired county 
magistrate and large landholder, of a right 



84 EMILY BRONTE. 

hearty, generous disposition. His wife is a 
quiet, silent, amiable woman ; his sons are two 
fine, spirited lads. My landlord is a respectable 
surgeon, and six days out of seven as drunk as 
a lord ; his wife is a bustling, chattering, kind- 
hearted soul ; his daughter — oh ! death and 
damnation ! Well, what am I } that is, what do 
they think I am "i — a most sober, abstemious, 
patient, mild-hearted, virtuous, gentlemanly phi- 
losopher, the picture of good works, the treasure- 
house of righteous thought. Cards are shuffled 
under the table-cloth, glasses are thrust into the 
cupboard, if I enter the room. I take neither 
spirit, wine, nor malt liquors. I dress in black, 
and smile like a saint or martyr. Every lady 
says, 'What a good young gentleman is the 
Postlethwaites' tutor.' This is fact, as I am a 
living soul, and right comfortably do I laugh at 
them ; but in this humor do I mean them to con- 
tinue. I took a half-year's farewell of old friend 
whiskey at Kendal the night after I [left]. There 
was a party of gentlemen at the Royal Hotel ; I 
joined them and ordered in supper and ' toddy 
as hot as Hell.' They thought I was a physi- 
cian, and put me into the chair. I gave them 
some toasts of the stiffest sort . . . washing 
them down at the same time till the room spun 
round and the candles danced in their eyes. 
One was a respectable old gentleman with pow- 



GIRLHOOD AT HAIVORTH. 85 

dered head, rosy cheeks, fat paunch, and ringed 
fingers ... he led off with a speech, and in 
two minutes, in the very middle of a grand sen- 
tence, stopped, wagged his head, looked wildly 
round, stammered, coughed, stopped again, called 
for his slippers, and so the waiter helped him 
to bed. Next a tall Irish squire and a native 
of the land of Israel began to quarrel about their 
countries, and in the warmth of argument dis- 
charged their glasses each at his neighbor's 
throat, instead of his own. I recommended 
blisters, bleeding [here illegible], so I flung my 
tumbler on the floor, too, and swore I'd join 
old Ireland. A regular rumpus ensued, but we 
were tamed at last, and I found myself in bed 
next morning, with a bottle of porter, a glass, 
and corkscrew beside me. Since then I have 
not tasted anything stronger than milk and 
water, nor, I hope, shall I till I return at mid- 
summer, when we will see about it. I am get- 
ting as fat as Prince Win at Springhead and as 
godly as his friend Parson Winterbottom. My 
hand shakes no longer : I write to the bankers 
at Ulverston with Mr. Postlethwaite, and sit 
drinking tea and talking slander with old ladies. 
As to the young ones, I have one sitting by me 
just now, fair-faced, blue-eyed, dark-haired, sweet 
eighteen. She little thinks the Devil is as near 
her. I was delighted to see thy note, old Squire, 



S6 EMILY BRONTE, 

but don't understand one sentence — perhaps 
you will know what I mean. You tell me like- 
wise about your keeping two hens and a cock, 
as if I did not know you kept a cock long since, 
and a game cock too, by Jupiter! How are all 
about you ? I long . . . [all torn next] every- 
thing about Haworth folk. Does little Nosey 
think I have forgotten him. No, by Jupiter ! 
nor is Alick either. I'll send him a remem- 
brance one of these days. But I must talk to 
some one prettier; so good night, old boy. 
Write directly, and believe me to be thine, 

"The Philosopher." 

Branwell's boasted reformation was not kept 
up for long. Soon he came back as heartless, 
as affectionate, as vain, as unprincipled as ever, 
to laugh and loiter about the steep street of 
Haworth. Then he went to Bradford as a por- 
trait-painter, and — so impressive is audacity — 
actually succeeded for some months in gaining 
a living there, although his education was of the 
slenderest, and, judging from the specimens still 
treasured in Haworth, his natural talent on a 
level with that of the average new student in 
any school of art. His tawny mane, his pose 
of untaught genius, his verses in the poet's 
corner of the paper, could not forever keep afloat 
this untaught and thriftless portrait-painter of 



GIRLHOOD AT HA WORTH. 



87 



twenty. Soon there came an end to his paint- 
ing there. He disappeared from Bradford sud- 
denly, heavily in debt, and was lost to sight, 
until unnerved, a drunkard, and an opium-eater, 
he came back to home and Emily at Havvorth. 

Meanwhile impetuous Charlotte was growing 
nervous and weak, gentle Anne consumptive 
and dejected, in their work away from home ; 
and Emily was toiling from dawn till dusk with 
her old servant Tabby for the old aunt who 
never cared for her, and the old father always 
courteous and distant. 

They knew the face of necessity more nearly 
than any friend's, those Bronte girls, and the 
pinch of poverty was for their own foot ; there- 
fore were they always considerate to any that 
fell into the same plight. During the Christmas 
holidays of 1837, old Tabby fell on the steep and 
slippery street and broke her leg. She was 
already nearly seventy, and could do little work ; 
now her accident laid her completely aside, leav- 
ing Emily, Charlotte, and Anne to spend their 
Christmas holidays in doing the housework and 
nursing the invalid. Miss Branwell, anxious to 
spare the girls' hands and her brother-in-law's 
pocket, insisted that Tabby should be sent to 
her sister's house to be nursed and another ser- 
vant engaged for the Parsonage. Tabby, she 
represented, was fairly well off, her sister in com- 



88 EMILY BRONTE. 

fortable circumstances ; the Parsonage kitchen 
might supply her with broths and jellies in 
plenty, but why waste the girls' leisure and 
scanty patrimony on an old servant competent 
to keep herself. Mr. Bronte was finally per- 
suaded, and his decision made known. But the 
girls were not persuaded. Tabby, so they averred, 
was one of the family, and they refused to aban- 
don her in sickness. They did not say much, 
but they did more than say — they starved. 
When the tea was served, the three sat silent, 
fasting. Next morning found their will yet 
stronger than their hunger — no breakfast. They 
did the day's work, and dinner came. Still they 
h^ld out, wan and sunk. Then the superiors 
gave in. 

The girls gained their victory — no stubborn 
freak, but the right to make a generous sacrifice, 
and to bear an honorable burden. 

That Christmas, of course, there could be no 
visiting ; nor the next. Tabby was slow in get- 
ting well ; but she did not outweary the patience 
of her friends. 

Two years later, Charlotte writes to her old 
schoolfellow : 

"December 21, 1839. 

"We are at present, and have been during the 
last month, rather busy, as for that space of 
time we have been without a servant, except a 



GIRLHOOD AT HA WORTH. 



89 



little girl to run errands. Poor Tabby became 
so lame that she was at length obliged to leave 
us. She is residing with her sister, in a little 
house of her own, which she bought with her 
own savings a year or two since. She is very 
comfortable, and wants nothing. As she is 
near we see her very often. In the meantime, 
Emily and I are sufficiently busy, as you may 
suppose ; I manage the ironing and keep the 
rooms clean ; Emily does the baking and attends 
to the kitchen. We are such odd animals that 
we prefer this mode of contrivance to having a 
new face among us. Besides, we do not despair 
of Tabby's return, and she shall not be sup- 
planted by a stranger in her absence. I excited 
aunt's wrath very much by burning the clothes 
the first time I attempted to iron ; but I do bet- 
ter now. Human feelings are queer things ; I 
am much happier blackleading the stoves, mak- 
ing the beds, and sweeping the floors at home 
than I should be living like a fine lady anywhere 
else." 1 

The year 1840 found Emily, Branwell, and 
Charlotte all at home together. Unnerved and 
dissipated as he was, Branwell was still a wel- 
come presence ; his gay talk still awakened glad 
promises in the ambitious and loving household 

1 Mrs. Gaskell. 



90 



EMILY BROXTE. 



which hoped all things from him. His mistakes 
and faults they pardoned ; thinking, poor souls, 
that the strong passions which led him astray 
betokened a strong character and not a power- 
less will. 

It was still to Branwell that they looked for 
the fame of the family. Their poems, their 
stories, were to these girls but a legitimate 
means of amusement and relief. The serious 
business of their life was to teath, to cook, to 
clean ; to earn or save the mere expense of their 
existence. No dream of literary fame gave a 
purpose to the quiet days of Emily Bronte. 
Charlotte and Branwell, more impulsive, more 
ambitious, had sent their work to Sou they, to 
Coleridge, to Wordsworth, in vain, pathetic hope 
of encouragement or recognition. Not so the 
sterner Emily, to whom expression was at once 
a necessity and a regret. Emily's brain, Emily's 
locked desk, these and nothing else knew the 
degree of her passion, her genius, her power. 
And yet acknowledged power would have been 
sweet to that dominant spirit. 

Meanwhile the immediate difficulty was to 
earn a living. Even those patient and cour- 
ageous girls could not accept the thought of a 
whole lifetime spent in dreary governessing by 
Charlotte and Anne, in solitary drudgery by 
homekeeping Emily. One way out of this hate- 



GIRLHOOD AT HAWORTH. 91 

ful vista seemed not impossible of attainment. 
For years it was the wildest hope, the cherished 
dream, of the author of * VVuthering Heights' 
and the author of * Villette.' And what was this 
dear and daring ambition? — to keep a ladies' 
school at Havvorth. 

Far enough off, difficult to reach, it looked to 
them, this paltry common-place ideal of theirs. 
For the house with its four bedrooms would have 
to be enlarged ; for the girls' education, with its 
Anglo-French and stumbling music, would have 
to be adorned by the requisite accomplishments. 
This would take time; time and money, — two 
luxuries most hard to get for the Vicar of Ha- 
worth's harassed daughters. They would sigh, 
and suddenly stop in their making of plans 
and drawing up of circulars. It seemed so dif- 
ficult. 

One person, indeed, might help them. Miss 
Branwell had saved out of her annuity of ^50 a 
year. She had a certain sum ; small enough, 
but to Charlotte and Emily it seemed as potent 
as the fairy's wand. The question was, would 
she risk it .'' 

It seemed not. The old lady had always 
chiefly meant her savings for the dear prodigal 
who bore her name, and Emily and Charlotte 
were not her favorites. The girls indeed only 
asked for a loan, but she doubted, hesitated, 



92 



EMILY BRONTE. 



doubted again. They were too proud to take 
an advantage so grudgingly proffered ; and while 
their talk was still of what means they might 
employ, while they still painfully toiled through 
improper French novels as " the best substitute 
for French conversation," they gave up the dream 
for the present, and Charlotte again looked out 
for a situation. Nearly a year elapsed before 
she found it — a happy year, full of plans and 
talks with Emily, and free from any more press- 
ing anxiety than Anne's delicate health always 
gave her sisters. Branwell was away and doing 
well as station-master at Luddendenfoot, "set 
off to seek his fortune in the wild, wandering, 
adventurous, romantic, knight-errant-like capa- 
city of clerk on the Leeds and Manchester Rail- 
way." Ellen came to stay at Haworth in the 
summer ; it was quite sociable and lively now in 
the gray house on the moors ; for, compelled by 
failing health, Mr. Bronte had engaged the help 
of a curate, and the Haworth curate brought his 
clerical friends about the house, to the great 
disgust of Emily, and the half-sentimental flut- 
tering of pensive Anne, which laid on Charlotte 
the responsibility of talking for all three. 

In the holidays when Anne was at home all 
the old glee and enjoyment of life returned. 
There was, moreover, the curate, " bonnie, pleas- 
ant, Hght-hearted, good-tempered, generous, care- 



GIRLHOOD AT HA WORTH. 



93 



less, crafty, fickle, and unclerical," to add piquancy 
to the situation. " He sits opposite to Anne at 
church, sighing softly, and looking out of the 
corners of his eyes — and she is so quiet, her 
look so downcast ; they are a picture," says 
merry Charlotte. This first curate at Haworth 
was exempted from Emily's liberal scorn ; he 
was a favorite at the vicarage, a clever, bright- 
spirited, and handsome youth, greatly in Miss 
Branwell's good graces. He would tease and 
flatter the old lady with such graciousness as 
made him ever sure of a welcome ; so that his 
daily visits to Mr. Brontes study were nearly 
always followed up by a call in the opposite par- 
lor, when Miss Branwell would frequently leave 
her up-stairs retreat and join in the lively chat- 
ter. She always presided at the tea-table, at 
which the curate was a frequent guest, and her 
nieces would be kept well amused all through 
the tea-hour by the curate's piquant sallies, baf- 
fling the old lady in her little schemes of control 
over the three high-spirited girls. None enjoyed 
the fun more than quiet Emily, always present 
and amused, " her countenance glimmering as it 
always did when she enjoyed herself," Miss Ellen 
Nussey tells me. Many happy legends, too fa- 
miliar to be quoted here, record the light heart 
and gay spirit that Emily bore in those untrou- 
bled days. FooHsh, pretty little stories of her 



g^ EMILY BRONTE. 

dauntless protection of the other girls from too 
pressing suitors. Never was duenna so gallant, 
so gay, and so inevitable. In compliment to the 
excellence of her swashing and martial outside 
on such occasions, the little household dubbed 
her ''The Major," a name that stuck to her in 
days when the dash and gayety of her soldiery 
bearing was sadly sobered down, and only the 
courage and dauntless heart remained. 

But in these early days of 1841, Emily was as 
happy as other healthy country girls in a con- 
genial home. " She did what we did," says Miss 
Nussey, " and never absented herself when she 
could avoid it — life at this period must have 
been sweet and pleasant to her." An equal, 
unchequered life, in which trifles seemed of 
great importance. We hear of the little joys 
and adventures of those days, so faithfully and 
long remembered, with a pathetic pleasurable- 
ness. So slight they are, and all their color 
gone, like pressed roses, though a faint sweet- 
ness yet remains. The disasters when Miss 
Branwell was cross and in no humor to receive 
her guests ; the long-expected excitement of a 
walk over the moors to Keighley where the 
curate was to give a lecture, the alarm and 
flurry when the curate, finding none of the four 
girls had ever received a valentine, proposed to 
send one to each on the next Valentine's Day. 



GIRLHOOD AT HA WORTH. 



95 



" No, no, the elders would never allow it, and 
yet it would certainly be an event to receive a 
valentine ; still, there would be such a lecture 
from Miss Branwell." " Oh no," he said, " I 
shall post them at Bradford." And to Bradford 
he walked, ten miles and back again, so that on 
the eventful 14th of February the anxiously ex- 
pected postman brought four valentines, all on 
delicately tinted paper, all enhanced by a verse 
of original poetry, touching on some pleasant 
characteristic in each recipient. What merri- 
ment and comparing of notes ! What pleased 
feigning of indignation ! The girls determined 
to reward him with a Rowland for his Oliver, 
and Charlotte wrote some rhymes full of fun and 
raillery which all the girls signed — Emily enter- 
ing into all this with much spirit and amusement 
— and finally despatched in mystery and secret 
glee. 

At last this pleasant fooling came to an end. 
Charlotte advertised for a place, and found it. 
While she was away she had a letter from Miss 
Wooler, offering Charlotte the good-will of her 
school at Dewsbury Moor. It was a chance 
not to be lost, although what inducement Emily 
and Charlotte could offer to their pupils it is not 
easy to imagine. But it was above all things 
necessary to make a home where delicate Anne 
might be sheltered, where homesick Emily could 



96 EMILY BRONTE. 

be happy, where Charlotte could have time to 
write,, where all might live and work together. 
Miss Wooler's offer was immediately accepted. 
Miss Branwell was induced to lend the girls 
^loo. No answer came from Miss Wooler. 
Then ambitious Charlotte, from her situation 
away, wrote to Miss Branwell at Haworth : ^ 

*' September 29, 1841. 

" Dear Aunt, 

" I have heard nothing of Miss Wooler yet 
since I wrote to her, intimating that I would 
accept her offer. I cannot conjecture the rea- 
son of this long silence, unless some unforeseen 
impediment has occurred in concluding the bar- 
gain. Meantime a plan has been suggested and 

approved by Mr. and Mrs. and others which 

I wish now to impart to you. My friends recom- 
mend, if I desire to secure permanent success, 
to delay commencing the school for six months 
longer, and by all means to contrive, by hook or 
by crook, to spend the intervening time in some 
school on the Continent. They say schools in 
England are so numerous, competition so great, 
that without some such step towards attaining 
superiority, we shall probably have a very hard 
struggle and may fail in the end. They say, 
moreover, that the loan of ;£ioo, which you 

1 Mrs. Gaskell. 



GIRLHOOD AT HA WORTH, 97 

have been so kind as to offer us, will perhaps 
not be all required now, as Miss Wooler will 
lend us the furniture ; and that, if the specula- 
tion is intended to be a good and successful one, 
half the sum, at least, ought to be laid out in the 
manner I have mentioned, thereby insuring a 
more speedy repayment both of interest and 
principal. 

" I would not go to France or to Paris. I 
would go to Brussels, in Belgium. The cost of 
the journey there, at the dearest rate of travel- 
ling, would be ;^5 ; living is there little more 
than half as dear as it is in England, and the 
facilities for education are equal or superior to 
any place in Europe. In half a year I could 
acquire a thorough familiarity with French. I 
could improve greatly in Italian, and even get 
a dash at German ; i. e. providing my health con- 
tinued as good as it is now 

" These are advantages which would turn to 
real account when we actually commenced a 
school ; and, if Emily could share them with 
me, we could take a footing in the world after- 
wards which we never can do now. I say Emily 
instead of Anne ; for Anne might take her turn 
at some future period, if our school answered. 
I feel certain, while I am writing, that you will 
see the propriety of what I say. You always 
like to use your money to the best advantage. 

7 



98 EMILY BRONTE. 

You are not fond of making shabby purchases ; 
when you do confer a favor it is often done in 
style ; and depend upon it, ;£"50 or ;£"ioo, thus laid 
out, would be well employed. Of course, I know 
no other friend in the world to whom I could 
apply on this subject besides yourself. I feel an 
absolute conviction that if this advantage were 
allowed us, it would be the making of us for life. 
Papa will perhaps think it a wild and ambitious 
scheme ; but who ever rose in the world without 
ambition } When he left Ireland to go to Cam- 
bridge University he was as ambitious as I am 
now." 

That was true. It must have struck a vibrant 
chord in the old man's breast. Absorbed in 
parish gossip and his 'Cottage Poems,' caring 
no longer for the world but only for newspaper 
reports of it, actively idle, living a resultless life 
of ascetic self-indulgence, the Vicar of Haworth 
was very proud of his energetic past. He had 
always held it up to his children as a model for 
them to copy. Charlotte's appeal would certainly 
secure her father as an ally to her cause. Miss 
Branwell, on the other hand, would not wish for 
displays of ambition in her already too irrepres- 
sible nieces. But she was getting old ; it would 
be a comfort to her, after all, to see them settled, 
and prosperously settled through her generosity. 



GIRLHOOD AT HA WORTH. 



99 



" I look to you, Aunt, to help us. I think you 
will not refuse," Charlotte had said. How, in- 
deed, could Miss Branwell, living in their home, 
be happy, and refuse ? 

Yet many discussions went on before anxious 
Charlotte got the answer. Emily, whom it con- 
cerned as nearly, must have listened waiting in 
a strange perturbation of hope and fear. To 
leave home — she knew well what it meant. 
Since she was six years old she had never left 
Yorkshire ; but those months of wearying home- 
sickness at Roe Head, at Halifax, must have 
most painfully rushed back upon her memory. 
Haworth was health, content, the very possibility 
of existence to this girl. To leave Haworth for 
a strange town beyond the seas, to see strange 
faces all round, to hear and speak a strange lan- 
guage, Charlotte's welcome prospect of adventure 
must have taken a nightmare shape to Emily. 
And for this she must hope ; this she must de- 
sire, plead for if necessary, and at least uphold. 
For Charlotte said the thing was essential to 
their future ; and in all details of management, 
Charlotte's word was law to her sisters. Even 
Emily, the independent, indomitable Emily, so 
resolute in keeping to any chosen path, looked 
to Charlotte to choose the way in practical 
affairs. 

At length consent was secured, written, and 



lOO EMILY BRONTE. 

despatched. Gleeful Charlotte gave notice to 
her employers and soon set out for home. There 
was much to be done. " Letters to write to 
Brussels, to Lille, and to London, lots of work to 
be done, besides clothes to repair." It was de- 
cided that the sisters should give up their chance 
of the school at Dewsbury Moor, since the site 
was low and damp, and had not suited Anne. 
On their return from Brussels they were to set 
up a school in some healthy seaside place in the 
East Riding. Burlington was the place where 
their fancy chiefly dwelt. To this beautiful and 
healthy spot, fronting the sea, eager pupils would 
flock for the benefit of instruction by three daugh- 
ters of a clergyman, " educated abroad " (for six 
months), speaking thorough French, improved 
Italian, and a dash of German. A scintillating 
programme of accomplishment danced before 
their eyes. 

There were, however, many practical difficul- 
ties to be vanquished first. The very initial 
step, the choice of a school, was hard to take. 
Charlotte writes to Ellen : 

"January 20, 1842. 

"We expect to leave England in about three 
weeks, but we are not yet certain as to the day, 
as it will depend on the convenience of a French 
lady now in London, Madame Marzials, under 



GIRLHOOD AT HAWORTH. iqi 

whose escort we are to sail. Our place of des- 
tination is changed. Papa received an unfavor- 
able account from Mr. or rather from Mrs. Jenkins 
of the French schools in Bruxelles, representing 
them as of an inferior caste in many respects. 
On further inquiry an institution at Lille in the 
North of France was highly recommended by 
Baptist Noel and other clergymen, and to that 
place it is decided that we are to go. The terms 
are £,^0 a year for each pupil for board and 
French alone ; but • a separate room will be 
allowed for this sum ; without this indulgence 
they are something lower. I considered it kind 
in aunt to consent to an extra sum for a separate 
room. We shall find it a great privilege in many 
ways. I regret the change from Bruxelles to 
Lille on many accounts." 

For Charlotte to regret the change was for an 
improvement to be discovered. She had set her 
heart on going to Brussels ; Mrs. Jenkins re- 
doubled her efforts and at length discovered the 
Pensionnat of Madame Heger in the Rue d'lsa- 
belle. 

Thither, as all the world is aware, Charlotte 
and Emily Bronte, both of age, went to school. 

" We shall leave England in about three 
weeks." The words had a ring of happy dar- 
ing in Charlotte's ears. Since at six years of 



102 EMILY BRONTE. 

age she had set out alone to discover the Golden 
City, romance, discovery, adventure, were sweet 
promises to her. She had often wished to see 
the world ; now she will see it. She had thirsted 
for knowledge ; here is the source. She longed 
to add new notes to that gamut of human char- 
acter which she could play with so profound a 
science ; she shall make a masterpiece out of 
her acquisitions. At this time her letters are 
full of busy gayety, giving accounts of her work, 
making plans, making fun. As happy and hope- 
ful a young woman as any that dwells in Haworth 
parish. 

Emily is different. It is she who imagined 
the girl in heaven who broke her heart with 
weeping for earth, till the angels cast her out in 
anger, and flung her into the middle of the heath, 
to wake there sobbing for joy. She did not care 
to know fresh people ; she hates strangers ; to 
walk with her bulldog. Keeper, over the moors 
is her best adventure. To learn new things is 
very well, but she prizes above everything origi- 
nality and the wild provincial flavor of her home. 
What she strongly, deeply loves is her moorland 
home, her own people, the creatures on the heath, 
the dogs who always feed from her hands, the 
flowers in the bleak garden that only grow at all 
because of the infinite care she lavishes upon 
them. The stunted thorn under which she sits 



GIRLHOOD AT HA WORTH. 



103 



to write her poems, is more beautiful to her than 
the cedars of Lebanon. To each and all of these 
she must now bid farewell. It is in a different 
tone that she says in her adieus, " We shall leave 
England in about three weeks." 



CHAPTER VII. 

IN THE RUE D'iSABELLE. 

The Rue d'Isabelle had a character of its own. 
It lies below your feet as you stand in the Rue 
Royale, near the statue of General Beliard. Four 
flights of steps lead down to the street, half gar- 
den, half old houses, with at one end a large 
square mansion, owning the garden that runs 
behind it and to the right of it. The house is 
old ; a Latin inscription shows it to have been 
given to the great Guild of Cross-bowmen by 
Queen Isabelle in the early years of the seven- 
teenth century. The garden is older ; long be- 
fore the Guild of the Cross-bowmen of the Great 
Oath, in deference to the wish of Queen Isabelle, 
permitted the street to be made through it, the 
garden had been their exercising place. There 
Isabelle herself, a member of their order, had 
shot down the bird. But the garden had a yet 
more ancient past ; when apple-trees, pear-trees, 
and alleys of Bruges cherries, when plots of 
marjoram and mint, of thyme and sweet-basil, 
filled the orchard and herbary of the Hospital 



IN THE RUE UISABELLE. 



105 



of the Poor. And the garden itself, before trees 
or flowers were planted, had resounded with the 
yelp of the Duke's hounds, when, in the thir- 
teenth century, it had been the Fosse-aux-chiens. 
This historic garden, this mansion, built by a 
queen for a great order, belonged in 1842 to 
Monsieur and Madame Heger, and was a famous 
Pensionnat de Demoiselles. 

There the Vicar of Haworth brought his two 
daughters one February day, spent one night in 
Brussels, and went straight back to his old house 
on the moors, so modern in comparison with the 
mansion in Rue d'Isabelle. A change, indeed, 
for Emily and Charlotte. Even now, Brussels 
(the headquarters of Catholicism far more than 
modern Rome) has a taste for pageantry that 
recalls mediaeval days. The streets decked with 
boughs and strewn with flowers, through which 
pass slowly the processions of the Church, white- 
clad children, boys like angels scattering roses, 
standard-bearers with emblazoned banners. Sur- 
pliced choristers singing Latin praises, acolytes 
in scarlet swinging censers, reliquaries and im- 
ages, before which the people fall down in prayer ; 
all this to-day is no uncommon sight in Brussels, 
and must have been yet more frequent in 1842. 

The flower-market out of doors, with clove- 
pinks, tall Mary-lilies, and delicate roses d' amour, 
filling the quaint mediaeval square before the 



I06 EMILY BRONTE. 

beautiful old facade of the Hotel de Ville. Ste.- 
Gudule, with its spires and arches ; the Mon- 
tagne de la Cour (almost as steep as Haworth 
street), its windows ablaze at night with jewels ; 
the little, lovely park, its great elms just coming 
into leaf, its statues just bursting from their 
winter sheaths of straw ; the galleries of ancient 
pictures, their walls a sober glory of colors, blues, 
deep as a summer night, rich reds, brown golds, 
most vivid greens. 

All this should have made an impression on 
the two home-keeping girls from Yorkshire ; 
and Charlotte, indeed, perceived something of 
its beauty and strangeness. But Emily, from 
a bitter sense of exile, from a natural narrowness 
of spirit, rebelled against it all as an insult to 
the memory of her home — she longed, hope- 
lessly, uselessly, for Haworth. The two Brontes 
were very different to the Belgian schoolgirls in 
Madame Heger's Pensionnat. They were, for 
one thing, ridiculously old to be at school — 
twenty-four and twenty-six 7- and they seemed 
to feel their position ; their speech was strained 
and odd; all the "sceptical, wicked, immoral 
French novels, over forty of them, the best sub- 
stitute for French conversation to be met with," 
which the girls had toiled through with so much 
singleness of spirit, had not cured the broadness 
of their accent nor the artificial idioms of their 



IN THE RUE D'ISABELLE. 107 

Yorkshire French. Monsieur Heger, indeed, con- 
sidered that they knew no French at all. Their 
manners, even among English people, were stiff 
and prim ; the hearty, vulgar, genial expansion 
of their Belsrian schoolfellows must have made 
them seem as lifeless as marionettes. Their 
dress — Haworth had permitted itself to wonder 
at the uncouthness of those amazing leg-of- 
mutton sleeves (Emily's pet whim in and out 
of fashion), at the ill-cut lankness of those skirts, 
clumsy enough on round little Charlotte, but a 
very caricature of mediaevalism on Emily's tall, 
thin, slender figure. They knew they were not 
in their element, and kept close together, rarely 
speaking. Yet Monsieur Heger, patiently watch- 
ing, felt the presence of a strange power under 
those uncouth exteriors. 

An odd little man of much penetration, this 
French schoolmaster. ^^ Homme de zele et de 
conscience, il poss^de a tm haiit degr^ l eloquence 
du ton sens et dn ccetcr." Fierce and despotic in 
the exaction of obedience, yet tender of heart, 
magnanimous and tyrannical, absurdly vain and 
absolutely unselfish. His wife's school was a 
kingdom to him ; he brought to it an energy, 
a zeal, a faculty of administration worthy to rule 
a kingdom. It was with the delight of a bota- 
nist discovering a rare plant in his garden, of 
a politician detecting a future statesman in his 



I08 EMILY BRONTE. 

nursery, that he perceived the unusual faculty 
which lifted his two English pupils above their 
schoolfellows. He watched them silently for 
some weeks. When he had made quite sure, 
he came forwards, and, so to speak, claimed 
them for his own. 

Charlotte at once accepted the yoke. All that 
he set her to do she toiled to accompUsh ; she 
followed out his trains of thought ; she adopted 
the style he recommended ; she gave him in re- 
turn for all his pains the most unflagging obedi- 
ence, the affectionate comprehension of a large 
intelligence. She writes to Ellen of her delight 
in learning and serving : " It is very natural to 
me to submit, very unnatural to command." 

Not so with Emily. The qualities which her 
sister understood and accepted, irritated her un- 
speakably. The masterfulness in little things, 
the irritability, the watchfulness, of the fiery little 
professor of rhetoric were utterly distasteful to 
her. She contradicted his theories to his face ; 
she did her lessons well, but as she chose to do 
them. She was as indomitable, fierce, unappeas- 
able, as Charlotte was ready and submissive. 
And yet it was Emily who had the larger share 
of Monsieur Heger's admiration. Egotistic and 
exacting he thought her, who never yielded to 
his petulant, harmless egoism, who never gave 
way to his benevolent tyranny ; but he gave her 



IN THE RUE n ISA BELLE. 109 

credit for logical powers, for a capacity for argu- 
ment unusual in a man, and rare, indeed, in a 
woman. She, not Charlotte, was the genius in 
his eyes, although he complained that her stub- 
born will rendered her deaf to all reason, when 
her own determination, or her own sense of right, 
was concerned. He fancied she might be a great 
historian, so he told Mrs. Gaskell. " Her faculty 
of imagination was such, her views of scenes and 
characters would have been so vivid and so pow- 
erfully expressed, and supported by such a show 
of argument, that it would have dominated over 
the reader, whatever might have been his previ- 
ous opinions or his cooler perception of the truth. 
She should have been a man : a great naviga- 
tor ! " cried the little, dark, enthusiastic rhetori- 
cian. " Her powerful reason would have deduced 
new spheres of discovery from the knowledge of 
the old ; and her strong imperious will would 
never have been daunted by opposition or diffi- 
culty ; never have given way but with life ! " 

Yet they "were never friends; though Mon- 
sieur Heger could speak so well of Emily at a 
time, be it remembered, when it was Charlotte's 
praises that were sought, when Emily's genius 
was set down as a lunatic's hobgoblin of night- 
mare potency. He and she were alike too im- 
perious, too independent, too stubborn. A couple 
of swords, neither of which could serve to sheathe 
the other. 



I lo EMIL V BRONTE. 

That time in Brussels was wasted upon Emily. 
The trivial characters which Charlotte made 
immortal merely annoyed her. The new im- 
pressions which gave another scope to Char- 
lotte's vision were nothing to her. All that was 
grand, remarkable, passionate, under the surface 
of that conventional Pensionnat de Demoiselles, 
was invisible to Emily. Notwithstanding her 
genius she was very hard and narrow. 

-Poor girl, she was sick for home. It was all 
nothing to her, less than a dream, this place she 
lived in. Charlotte's engrossment in her new 
life, her eagerness to please her master, was a 
contemptible weakness to this imbittered heart. 
She would laugh when she found her elder 
sister trying to arrange her homely gowns in 
the French taste, and stalk silently through the 
large schoolrooms with a fierce satisfaction in 
her own ugly sleeves, in the Haworth cut of her 
skirts. She seldom spoke a word to any one ; 
only sometimes she would argue with Monsieur 
Heger, perhaps secretly glad to have the chance 
of shocking Charlotte. If they went out to tea, 
she would sit still on her chair, answering "Yes" 
and "No;" inert, miserable, with a heart full 
of tears. When her work was done she would 
walk in the Cross-bowmen's ancient garden, 
under the trees, leaning on her shorter sister's 
arm, pale, silent — a tall, stooping figure. Often 



IN THE RUE DUSABELLE. m 

she said nothing at all. Charlotte, also, was 
very profitably speechless ; under her eyes * Vil- 
lette ' was taking shape. But Emily did not think 
of Brussels. She was dreaming of Haworth. 

One poem that she wrote at this time may 
appropriately be quoted here. It was, Charlotte 
tells us, " composed at twilight, in the school- 
room, when the leisure of the evening play- 
hour brought back, in full tide, the thoughts of 
home :" 

" A little while, a little while, 
The weary task is put away. 
And I can sing and I can smile 
Alike, while I have holiday. 

" Where wilt thou go, my harassed heart — 

What thought, what scene, invites thee now .'' 
What spot, or near or far apart, 
Has rest for thee, my weary brow .'' 

"There is a spot mid barren hills. 

Where winter howls and driving rain ; 
But, if the dreary tempest chills. 
There is a light that warms again. 

" The house is old, the trees are bare. 

Moonless above bends twilight's dome ; 
But what on earth is half so dear — 
So longed for — as the hearth of home ? 

" The mute bird sitting on the stone, 

The dark moss dripping from the wall, 
The thorn-tree gaunt, the walks o'ergrown, 
I love them; how I love them all ! 



112 EMILY BRONTE. 

" And, as I mused, the naked room, 
The alien fire-light died away; 
And from the midst of cheerless gloom 
I passed to bright, unclouded day. 

"A little and a lone green lane, 

That opened on a connnon wide ; 
A distant, drcar^^ dim, blue chain 
Of mountains circling every side : 

"A heaven so dear, an earth so calm, 
So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; 
And — deepening still the dream-like charm — 
Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. 

" That was the scene, I knew it well ; 
I knew the turfy pathway's sweep. 
That, winding o'er each billowy swell, 

Marked out the tracks of wandering sheep. 

"Could I have lingered but an hour, 
It well had paid a week of toil ; 
But truth has banished fancy's power, 
Restraint and heavy task recoil. 

"Even as I stood with raptured eye, 
Absorbed in bliss so deep and dear, 
My hour of rest had fleeted by, 

And back came labor, bondage, care." 

Charlotte meanwhile writes in good, even in 
high spirits to her friend : " I think I am never 
unhappy, my present life is so delightful, so con- 
genial, compared to that of a governess. My 
time, constantly occupied, passes too rapidly. 
Hitherto both Emily and I have had good 
health, and therefore we have been able to work 



IN Till': RUE VISA BELLE. 113 

well. There is one individual of whom T have 
not yet spoken — Monsieur Heger, the husl)and 
of Madame. He is professor of rhetoric — a 
man of power as to mind, but very choleric 
and irritable as to temperament — a little, black, 
ugly being, with a face that varies in expression ; 
sometimes he borrows the lineaments of an in- 
sane tomcat, sometimes those of a delirious 
hyena, occasionally — but very seldom — he dis- 
cards these perilous attractions and assumes an 
air not a hundred times removed from what you 
would call mild and gentlemanlike. He is very 
angry with me just at present, because I have 
written a translation which he chose to stigma- 
tize as *peu correct.' He did not tell me so, but 
wrote the words on the margin of my book, and 
asked, in brief, stern phrase, how it happened 
that my compositions were always better than 
my translations.^ adding that the thing seemed 
to him inexplicable." 

The reader will already have recognized in the 
black, ugly, choleric little professor of rhetoric, 
the one absolutely natural hero of a woman's 
novel, the beloved and whimsical figure of the 
immortal Monsieur Paul Emanuel. 

*'Pfe and Emily," adds Charlotte, "don't draw 
well together at all. Emily works like a horse, 
and she has had great difficulties to contend 
with, far greater than I have had." 

8 



114 



EMILY BRONTE. 



Emily did indeed work hard. She was there 
to work, and not till she had learned a certain 
amount would her conscience permit her to re- 
turn to Haworth. It was for dear liberty that 
she worked. She began German, a favorite 
study in after years, and of some purpose, since 
the style of Hoffmann left its impression on the 
author of 'Wuthcring Heights.' She worked 
hard at music ; and in half a year the stum- 
bling schoolgirl became a brilliant and proficient 
musician. Her playing is said to have been sin- 
gularly accurate, vivid, and full of fire. French, 
too, both in grammar and in literature, was a 
constant study. 

Monsieur Heger recognized the fact that in 
dealing with the Brontes he had not to make the 
customary allowances for a schoolgirl's undevel- 
oped inexperience. These were women of ma- 
ture and remarkable intelligence. The method 
he adopted in teaching them was rather that of 
a University professor than such as usually is 
used in a pensionnat. He would choose some 
masterpiece of Rrench style, some passage of 
eloquence or portraiture, read it to them with a 
brief lecture on its distinctive qualities, pointing 
out what was exaggerated, what apt, what false, 
what subtle in the author's conception or his 
mode of expressing it. They were then dis- 
missed to make a similar composition, without 



IN THE RUE D'ISABELLE. 



115 



the aid of grammar or dictionary, availing them- 
selves as far as possible of the miaiices of style 
and the peculiarities of method of the writer 
chosen as the model of the hour; In this way 
the girls became intimately acquainted with the 
literary technique of the best French masters. 
To Charlotte the lessons were of incalculable 
value, perfecting in her that clear and accurate 
style which makes her best work never weari- 
some, never old-fashioned. But the very thought 
of imitating any one, especially of imitating any 
French writer, was repulsive to Emily, " rustic 
all through, moorish, wild and knotty as a root 
of heath." ^ When Monsieur Heger had ex- 
plained his plan to them, "Emily spoke first; 
and said that she saw no good to be derived from 
it ; and that by adopting it they would lose all 
originality of thought and expression. She would 
have entered into an argument on the subject, 
but for this Monsieur Heger had no time. Char- 
lotte then spoke ; she also doubted the success 
of the plan ; but she would follow out Monsieur 
Heger s advice, because she was bound to obey 
him while she was his pupil." ^ Charlotte soon 
found a keen enjoyment in this species of literary 
composition, yet Emily's devoir was the best. 
They are, alas, no longer to be seen, no longer 
in the keeping of so courteous and proud a guar- 

1 C. Bronte. 2 Mrs. Gaskell. 



1 1 6 EMIL Y BRONTE. 

dian as Mrs. Gaskell had to deal with ; but she 
and Monsieur Heger both have expressed their 
opinions that in genius, imagination, power, and 
force of language, Emily was the superior of the 
two sisters. 

So great was the personality of this energetic, 
silent, brooding, ill-dressed young Englishwoman, 
that all who knew her recognized in her the 
genius they were slow to perceive in her more 
sociable and vehement sister. Madame Heger, 
the worldly, cold-mannered surveillaiite of Vil- 
lette, avowed the singular force of a nature most 
antipathetic to her own. Yet Emily had no 
companions ; the only person of whom we hear, 
in even the most negative terms of friendliness, 
is one of the teachers, a certain Mademoiselle 
Marie, " talented and original, but of repulsive 
and arbitrary manners, which have made the 
whole school, except Emily and myself, her 
bitter enemies." No less arbitrary and repul- 
sive seemed poor Emily herself, a sprig of purple 
heath at discord with those bright, smooth ge- 
raniums and lobelias ; Emily, of whom every 
surviving friend extols the never-failing, quiet 
unselfishness, the genial spirit ready to help, the 
timid but faithful affection. She was so com- 
pletely Jiors de son assiette that even her virtues 
were misplaced. 

There was always one thing she could do, one 



IN THE RUE UISABELLE, 



117 



thing as natural as breath to Emily — deter- 
mined labor. In that merciful engrossment she 
could forget her heartsick weariness and the jar- 
ring strangeness of things ; every lesson con- 
quered was another step taken on the long road 
home. And the days allowed ample space for 
work, although it was supported upon a some- 
what slender diet. 

Counting boarders and externes, Madame He- 
ger's school numbered over a hundred pupils. 
These were divided into three classes ; the 
second, in which the Brontes were, containing 
sixty students. In the last row, side by side, 
absorbed and quiet, sat Emily and Charlotte. 
Soon after rising, the pensionnaires were given 
their light Belgian breakfast of coffee and rolls. 
Then from nine to twelve they studied. Three 
mistresses and seven professors were engaged 
to take the different classes. At twelve a lunch 
of bread and fruit ; then a turn in the green alley, 
Charlotte and Emily always walking together. 
From one till two, fancy-work ; from two till four, 
lessons again. Then dinner : the one solid meal 
of the day. From five till six the hour was free, 
Emily's musing-hour. From six till seven the 
terrible lecture pieusey hateful to the Brontes' 
Protestant spirit. At eight a supper of rolls 
and water ; then prayers, and to bed. 

The room they slept in was a long school- 



Il8 ^ EMILY BRONTE. 

dormitory. After all they could not get the 
luxury, so much desired, of a separate room. 
But their two beds were alone together at the 
further end, veiled in white curtains ; discreet 
and retired as themselves. Here, after the day's 
hard work, they slept. In sleep, one is no longer 
an exile. 

But often Emily did not sleep. The old, well- 
known pain, wakefulness, longing, was again be- 
ginning to relax her very heartstrings. " The 
same suffering and conflict ensued, heightened 
by the strong recoil of her upright heretic and 
English spirit from the gentle Jesuitry of the 
foreign and Romish system. Once more she 
seemed sinking, but this time she rallied through 
the mere force of resolution : with inward re- 
morse and shame she looked back on her former 
failure, and resolved to conquer, but the victory 
cost her dear. She was never happy till she 
carried her hard-won knowledge back to the 
remote English village, the old parsonage house 
and desolate Yorkshire hills." ^ 

But not yet, not yet, this happiness ! The 
opportunity that had been so hardly won must 
not be thrown away before the utmost had been 
made of it. And she was not utterly alone. 
Charlotte was there. The success that she had 
in her work must have helped a little to make 

1 C. Bronte. Memoir of her sisters. 



IN THE RUE n IS A BELLE. 119 

her foreign home tolerable to her. Soon she 
knew enough of music to give lessons to the 
younger pupils. Then German, costing her and 
Charlotte an extra ten francs the month, as also 
much severe study and struggle. Charlotte 
writes in the summer : " Emily is making rapid 
progress in French, German, music, and drawing. 
Monsieur and Madame Heger begin to recognize 
the valuable parts of her character under her 
singularities." 

It was doubtful, even, whether they would come 
home in September. Madame Heger made a 
proposal to her two English pupils for them to 
stay on, without paying, but without salary, for 
half a year. She would dismiss her English 
teacher, whose place Charlotte would take. Em- 
ily was to teach music to the younger pupils. 
The proposal was kind, and would be of advan- 
tage to the sisters. 

Charlotte declared herself inclined to accept 
it. " I have been happy in Brussels," she averred. 
And Emily, though she, indeed, was not happy, 
acknowledged the benefit to be derived from a 
longer term of study. Six months, after all, was 
rather short to gain a thorough knowledge of 
French, with Italian and German, when you add 
to these acquirements music and drawing, which 
Emily worked at with a will. Besides, she could 
not fail again, could not go back to Haworth 



120 EMILY BRONTE. 

leaving Charlotte behind ; neither could she 
spoil Charlotte's future by persuading her to 
reject Madame Heger's terms. So both sisters 
agreed to stay in Brussels. They were not utterly 
friendless there ; two Miss Taylors, schoolfellows 
and dear friends of Charlotte's, were at school at 
the Chateau de Kokleberg, just outside the bar- 
riers. Readers of * Shirley ' know them as Rose 
and Jessie Yorke. The Brontes met them often, 
nearly every week, at some cousins of the Tay- 
lors, who lived in the town. But this diversion, 
pleasant to Charlotte, was merely an added an- 
noyance to Emily. She would sit stiff and silent, 
unable to say a word, longing to be somewhere 
at her ease. Mrs. Jenkins, too, had begun with 
asking them to spend their Sundays with her ; 
but Emily never said a word, and Charlotte, 
though sometimes she got excited and spoke 
well and vehemently, never ventured on an 
opinion till she had gradually wheeled round 
in her chair with her back to the person she 
addressed. They were so shy, so rustic, Mrs. 
Jenkins gave over inviting them, feeling that 
they did not like to refuse, and found it no 
pleasure to come. Charlotte, indeed, still had 
the Taylors, their cousins, and the family of a 
doctor living in the town, whose daughter was 
a pupil and friend of hers. Charlotte, too, had 
Madame Heger and her admired professor of 



IN THE RUE niSABELLE. 121 

rhetoric ; but Emily had no friend except her 
sister. 

Nevertheless, it was settled they should stay. 
T\i^ grandes vacances began on the 15 th of Au- 
gust, and, as the journey to Yorkshire cost so 
much, and as they were anxious to work, the 
Bronte girls spent their holidays in Rue d'lsa- 
belle. Besides themselves, only six or eight 
boarders remained. All their friends were away 
holiday-making ; but they worked hard, prepar- 
ing their lessons for the masters who, holiday- 
less as they, had stayed behind in white, dusty, 
blazing, airless Brussels, to give lectures to the 
scanty class at Madame Heger's pensionnat. 

So the dreary six weeks passed away. In 
October the term began again, the pupils came 
back, new pupils were admitted. Monsieur He- 
ger was more gesticulatory, vehement, com- 
manding, than usual, and Madame, in her quiet 
way, was no less occupied. Life and youth filled 
the empty rooms. The Bronte girls, sad enough 
indeed, for their friend Martha Taylor had died 
suddenly at the Chateau de Kokleberg, were, not- 
withstanding, able to feel themselves in a more 
natural position for women of their age. Charlotte, 
lienceforth, by Monsieur Heger's orders, ** Made- 
moiselle Charlotte," was the new English teacher; 
Emily the assistant music-mistress. But, in the 
middle of October, in the first flush of their em- 



1 22 EMIL Y BRONTE. 

ployment, came a sudden recall to Haworth. 
Miss Branvvell was very ill. Immediately the 
two girls, who owed so much to her, who, but 
for her bounty, could never have been so far 
away in time of need, decided to go home. They 
broke their determination to Monsieur and Ma- 
dame Heger, who, sufficiently generous to place 
the girls' duty before their own convenience, up- 
held them in their course. They hastily packed 
up their things, took places vid Antwerp to Lon- 
don, and prepared to start. At the last moment, 
the trunks packed, in the early morning the 
postman came. He brought another letter from 
Haworth. Their aunt was dead. 

So much the greater need that they should 
hasten home. Their father, left without his 
companion of twenty years, to keep his house, 
to read to him at night, to discuss with him on 
equal terms, their father would be lonely and 
distressed. Henceforth one of his daughters 
must stay with him. Anne was in an excellent 
situation ; must they ask her to give it up } 
And what now of the school, the school at Bur- 
^ngton .-* There was much to take counsel over 
and consider ; they must hurry home. So, know- 
ing the worst, their future hanging out of shape 
and loose before their eyes, they set out on their 
dreary journey, knowing not whether or when 
they might return. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



A RETROSPECT. 



" Poor, brilliant, gay, moody, moping, wildly ex- 
citable, miserable Bronte ! No history records 
your many struggles after the good — your wit, 
brilliance, attractiveness, eagerness for excite- 
ment — all the qualities which made you such 
* good company ' and dragged you down to an 
untimely grave." 

Thus ejaculates Mr. Francis H. Grundy, re- 
membering the boon-companion of his early 
years, the half-insane, pitiful creature that opium 
and brandy had made of clever Branwell at 
twenty-two. Returned from Bradford, his ner- 
vous system racked by opium fumes, he had 
loitered about at Haworth until his father, stub- 
born as he was, perceived the obvious fact that 
every idle day led his only son more hopelessly 
down to the pit of ruin. At last he exerted his 
influence to find some work for Branwell, and 
obtained for his reckless, fanciful, morbid lad 
the post of station-master at a small roadside 
place, Luddendenfoot by name, on the Lanca- 



124 EMILY BRONTE. 

shire and Yorkshire Railway. Thither he went 
some months before Charlotte and Emily left 
for Brussels. It was there Mr. Grundy met 
him ; a novel station-master. 

" Had a position been chosen for this strange 
creature for the express purpose of driving him 
several steps to the bad, this must have been it. 
The line was only just opened. The station was 
a rude wooden hut, and there was no village 
near at hand. Alone in the wilds of Yorkshire, 
with few books, little to do, no prospects, and 
wretched pay, with no society congenial to his 
better taste, but plenty of wild, rolhcking, hard- 
headed, half-educated manufacturers, who would 
welcome him to their houses, and drink with 
him as often as he chose to come, what was this 
morbid man, who could n't bear to be alone, to 
do .? " 1 

What Branwell always did, in fine, was that 
which was easiest to him to do. He drank him- 
self violent, when he did not drink himself 
maudlin. He left the porter at the station to 
keep the books, and would go off for days " on 
the drink " with his friends and fellow-carousers. 
^out this time Mr. Grundy, then an engineer 
at Halifax, fell in with the poor, half-demented, 
lonely creature, and for a while things went a 
little better. 

1 • Pictures of the Past.' F. H. Grundy. 



A RETROSPECT. 



125 



Drink and riot had not embellished the tawny- 
maned, laughing, handsome darling of Haworth. 
Here is his portrait as at this time he appeared 
to his friend : 

"He was insignificantly small — one of his 
life's trials. He had a mass of red hair, which 
he wore brushed high off his forehead — to help 
his height, I fancy — a great, bumpy, intellec- 
tual forehead, nearly half the size of the whole 
facial contour ; small ferrety eyes, deep-sunk 
and still further hidden by the never-removed 
spectacles ; prominent nose, but weak lower fea- 
tures. He had a downcast look, which never 
varied, save for a rapid momentary glance at 
long intervals. Small and thin of person, he 
was the reverse of attractive at first sight." 

Yet this insignificant, sunken-eyed slip of hu- 
manity had a spell for those who heard him 
speak. There was no subject, moral, intellectual, 
or philosophic, too remote or too profound for him 
to measure it at a moment's notice, with the ever- 
ready, fallacious plumb-line of his brilliant vanity. 
He would talk for hours : be eloquent, convin- 
cing, almost noble ; and afterwards accompany 
his audience to the nearest public-house. 

" At times we would drive over in a gig to 
Haworth (twelve miles) and* visit his people. 
He was there at his best, and would be eloquent 
and amusing, although sometimes he would burst 



126 EMILY BROxXTE. 

into tears when returning, and swear that he 
meant to amend. I believe, however, that he 
was half mad and could not control himself." ^ 

So must his friends in kindness think. Mad ; 
if haunting, morbid dreads and fancies conjured 
up by poisonous drugs and never to be laid ; if 
a will laid prostrate under the yoke of unclean 
habits ; if a constitution prone to nervous de- 
range^iient and blighted by early excess ; if such 
things, forcing him by imperceptible daily pres- 
sure to choose the things he loathed, to be the 
thing he feared, to act a part abhorrent to his 
soul ; if such estranging and falsification of a 
man's true self may count as lunacy, the luck- 
less, worthless boy was mad. 

It must have galled him, going home, to be 
welcomed so kindly, hoped so much from, by 
those who had forgiven amply, and did not 
dream how heavy a mortgage had since been 
laid upon their pardon ; to have talked to the 
prim, pretty old lady who denied herself every 
day to save an inheritance for him ; to watch 
pious, gentle Anne, into whose dreams the sins 
she prayed against had never entered ; worst of 
all, the sight of his respectable, well-preserved 
father, honored by all the parish, successful, 
placed by his own stern, continued will high 
beyond the onslaughts of temptation, yet with 

1 Pictures of the Past. 



A RETROSPECT. 



127 



a temperament singularly akin to that morbid, 
passionate son's. 

So he would weep going home ; weep for his 
falling off, and perhaps more sincerely for the 
short life of his contrition. Then the long even- 
ings alone with his thoughts in that lonely place 
would make him afraid of repentance, afraid of 
God, himself, night, all. He would drink. 

He had fits of as contrary pride. " He was 
proud of his name, his strength, and his abiU- 
ties." Proud of his name ! He wrote a poem 
on it, * Bronte,' an eulogy of Nelson, which won 
the patronizing approbation of Leigh Hunt, Miss 
Martineau, and others, to whom, at his special re- 
quest, it was submitted. Had he ever heard of 
his dozen aunts and uncles, the Pruntys of Aha- 
derg .? Or if not, with what sensations must 
the Vicar of Haworth have listened to this bla- 
zoning forth and triumphing over the glories of 
his ancient name } 

Branwell had fits of passion, too, the repeti- 
tion of his father's vagaries. " I have seen him 
drive his doubled fist through the panels of a 
door — it seemed to soothe him." The rough 
side of his nature got full play, and perhaps won 
him some respect denied to his cleverness, in 
the society amongst which he was chiefly thrown. 
For a little time the companionship of Mr. 
Grundy served to rescue him from utter aban- 



128 EMILY BRONTE. 

donment to license. But in the midst of this 
improvement, the crash came. As he had sown, 
he reaped. 

Those long absences, drinking at the houses 
of his friends, had been turned to account by the 
one other inhabitant of the station at Ludden- 
denfoot. The luggage porter was left *to keep 
the books, and, following his master's example, 
he sought his own enjoyment before his em- 
ployers' gain. He must have made a pretty 
penny out of those escapades of Branwell's, for 
some months after the Vicar of Haworth had 
obtained his son's appointment, when the books 
received their customary examination, serious 
defalcations were discovered. An inquiry was 
instituted, which brought to light Branwell's 
peculiar method of managing the station. The 
lad himself was not suspected of actual theft ; 
but so continued, so glaring, had been his negli- 
gence, so hopeless the cause, that he was sum- 
marily dismissed the company's service, and sent 
home in dire disgrace to Haworth. 

He came home not only in disgrace, but ill. 
Never strong, his constitution was deranged and 
broken by his excesses ; yet, strangely enough, 
consumption, which carried off so prematurely 
the more highly gifted, the more strongly prin- 
cipled daughters of the house, consumption, 
which might have been originally produced by 



A RETROSPECT. 1 29 

the vicious life this youth had led, laid no 
claim upon him. His mother's character and 
her disease descended to her daughters only. 
Branwell inherited his father's violent temper, 
strong passions, and nervous weakness without 
the strength of will and moral fibre that made 
his father remarkable. Probably this brilliant, 
weak, shallow, selfish lad reproduced accurately 
enough the characteristics of some former 
Prunty ; for Patrick Branwell was as distinctly 
an Irishman as if his childhood had been spent 
in his grandfather's cabin at Ahaderg. 

He came home to find his sisters all away. 
Anne in her situation as governess. Emily and 
Charlotte in Rue d'Isabelle. No one, therefore, 
to be a check upon his habits, save the neat old 
lady, growing weaker day by day, who spent 
nearly all her time in her bedroom to avoid the 
paven floors of the basement; and the father,, 
who did not care for company, took his meals 
alone for fear of indigestion, and found it neces- 
sary to spend the succeeding time in perfect 
quiet. The greater part of the day was, there- 
fore, at Branwell's uncontrolled, unsupervised 
disposal. 

To do him justice, he does seem to have made 

so much effort after a new place of work as was 

involved in writing letters to his friend Grundy, 

and probably to others, suing for employment. 

9 



I30 



EMILY BRONTE. 



But his offence had been too glaring to be con- 
doned. Mr. Grundy seems to have advised the 
hapless young man to take shelter in the 
Church, where the influence of his father and 
his mother's relatives might help him along ; 
but, as Branwell said, he had not a single quali- 
fication, " save, perhaps, hypocrisy." Parsons' 
sons rarely have a great idea of the Church. 
The energy, self-denial, and endurance which 
a clergyman ought to possess were certainly 
not in Branwell's line. Besides, how could he 
take his degree } Montgomery, it seems, rec- 
ommended him to make trial of literature. 
"All very well, but I have little conceit of my- 
self and great desire for activity. You say that 
you write with feelings similar .to those with 
which you last left me ; keep them no longer. 
I trust I am somewhat changed, or I should 
not be worth a thought ; and though nothing 
could ever give me your buoyant spirits and 
an outward man corresponding therewith, I may, 
in dress and appearance, emulate something like 
ordinary decency. And now, wherever coming 
years may lead — Greenland's snows or sands of 
Afric — I trust, etc. 9th June, 1842." * 

It is doubtful, judging from Branwell's letters 
and his verses, whether anything much better 
than his father's ' Cottage in the Wood,' would 

1 Pictures of the Past. 



A RETROSPECT. 



131 



have resulted from his following the advice of 
James Montgomery. Fluent ease, often on the 
verge of twaddle, with here and there a bright, 
felicitous touch, with here and there a smack of 
the conventional hymn-book and pulpit twang — 
such weak and characterless effusions are all 
that is left of the passion-ridden pseudo-genius 
of Haworth. Real genius is perhaps seldom of 
such showy temperament. 

Poor Branwell ! it needed greater strength 
than his to retrieve that first false step into ruin. 
He cannot help himself, and can find no one to 
help him ; he appeals again to Mr. Grundy (in a 
letter which must, from internal evidence, have 
been written about this time, although a dif- 
ferent and impossible year is printed at its 
heading) : 

"Dear Sir, 

" I cannot avoid the temptation to cheer my 
spirits by scribbling a few lines to you while I 
sit here alone, all the household being at church 
— the sole occupant of an ancient parsonage 
among lonely hills, which probably will never 
hear the whistle of an engine till I am in my 
grave. 

" After experiencing, since my return home, 
extreme pain and illness, with mental depres- 
sion worse than either, I have at length ac- 



132 EMILY BRONTE. 

quired health and strength 'and soundness of 
mind, far superior, I trust, to anything shown 
by that miserable wreck you used to know under 
my name. I can now speak cheerfully and en- 
joy the company of another without the stimu- 
lus of six glasses of whiskey. I can write, think, 
and act with some apparent approach to resolu- 
tion, and I only want a motive for exertion to be 
happier than I have been for years. But I feel 
my recovery from almost insanity to be retarded 
by having nothing to listen to except the wind 
moaning among old chimneys and older ash- 
trees — nothing to look at except heathery hills, 
walked over when life had all to hope for and 
nothing to regret with me — no one to speak 
to except crabbed old Greeks and Romans who 
have been dust the last five \sic\ thousand years. 
And yet this quiet life, from its contrast, makes 
the year passed at Luddendenfoot appear like a 
nightmare, for I would rather give my hand 
than undergo again the grovelling carelessness, 
the malignant, yet cold debauchery, the determi- 
nation to find out how far mind could carry body 
without both being chucked into hell, which too 
often marked my conduct when there, lost as 
I was to all I really liked, and seeking relief in 
the indulgence of feelings which form the black- 
est spot in my character. 

"Yet I have something still left me which 



A RETROSPECT. 1 33 

may do me service. But I ought not to remain 
too long in solitude, for the world soon forgets 
those who have bidden it *good-by.' Quiet is 
an excellent cure, but no medicine should be 
continued after a patient's recovery, so I am 
about, though ashamed of the business, to dun 

you for answers to . 

"Excuse the trouble I am giving to one on 
whose kindness I have no claim, and for whose 
services I am offering no return except grati- 
tude and thankfulness, which are already due 
to you. Give my sincere regards to Mr. Ste- 
phenson. A word or two to show you have not 
altogether forgotten me will greatly please, 

" Yours, etc." 

Alas, no helping hand rescued the sinking 
wretch from the quicksands of idle sensuality 
which slowly ingulfed him ! Yet, at this time, 
there might have been hope, had he been kept 
from evil. Deliver himself he could not. His 
"great desire for activity" seems to have had to 
be in abeyance for some months, for on the 25th 
of October he is still at Haworth. He then 
writes to Mr. Grundy again. The letter brings 
us up to the time when — in the cheerless morn- 
ing — Charlotte and Emify set out on their jour- 
ney homewards ; it reveals to us how much real 
undeserved suffering must have been going on 



134 EMILY BRONTE. 

side by side with Branwell's purposeless miser- 
ies in the gray old parsonage at Haworth. The 
good methodical old maiden aunt — who for 
twenty years had given the best of her heart to 
this gay affectionate nephew of hers — had come 
down to the edge of the grave, having waited 
long enough to see the hopeless fallacy of all her 
dreams for him, all her affection. Branwell, 
who was really tender-hearted, must have been 
sobered then. 

He writes to Mr. Grundy in a sincere and 
manly strain : 

" My DEAR Sir, 

" There is no misunderstanding. I have had 
a long attendance at the death-bed of the Rev. 
Mr. Weightman, one of my dearest friends, and 
now I am attending at the death-bed of my Aunt, 
who has been for twenty years as my mother. 
I expect her to die in a few hours. 

" As my sisters are far from home, I have had 
much on my mind, and these things must serve 
as an apology for what was never intended as 
neglect of your friendship to us. 

" I had meant not only to have written to you, 
but to the Rev. James Martineau, gratefully and 
sincerely acknowledging the receipt of his most 
kindly and truthful criticism — at least in advice, 
though too generous far in praise — but one sad 



A RETROSPECT. 



135 



ceremony must, I fear, be gone through first. 
Give my most sincere respects to Mr. Stephen- 
son, and excuse this scrawl ; my eyes are too 
dim with sorrow to see well. Believe me, your 
not very happy, but obliged friend and servant, 

" P. B. BRONxii." 

But not till three days later the end came. 
By that time Anne was home to tend the woman 
who had taken her, a little child, into her love 
and always kept her there. Anne had ever lived 
gladly with Miss Branwell ; her more dejected 
spirit did not resent the occasional oppressions, 
the httle tyrannies, which revolted Charlotte and 
silenced Emily. And, at the last, all the con- 
stant self-sacrifice of those twenty years, spent for 
their sake in a strange and hated country, would 
shine out, and yet more endear the sufferer to 
those who had to lose her. 

On the 29th of October Branwell again writes 
to his friend : 

" My dear Sir, 

"As I don't want to lose a real iriend, I write 
in deprecation of the tone of your letter. Death 
only has made me neglectful of your kindness, 
and I have lately had so much experience with 
him, that your sister would noi now blame me 
for indulging in gloomy visions either of this 



136 EMILY BRONTE. 

world or of another. I am incoherent, I fear, 
but I have been waking two nights witnessing 
such agonizing suffering as I would not wish my 
worst enemy to endure ; and I have now lost 
the pride and director of all the happy days con- 
nected with my childhood. I have suffered such 
sorrow since I last saw you at Haworth, that I do 

not now care if I were fighting in India or , 

since, when the mind is depressed, danger is the 
most effectual cure." 

Miss Branwell was dead. All was over : she 
was buried on a Tuesday morning, before Char- 
lotte and Emily, having travelled night and day, 
got home. They found Mr. Bronte and Anne 
sitting together, quietly mourning the customary 
presence to be known no more. Branwell was 
not there. It was the first time he would see 
his sisters since his great disgrace; he could not 
wait at home to welcome them. 

Miss Branwell's will had to be made known. 
The little property that she had saved out of her 
frugal income was all left to her three nieces. 
Branwell had been her darling, the only son, 
called by her name ; but his disgrace had 
wounded her too deeply. He was not even 
mentioned in her will. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE RECALL. 



Suddenly recalled from what had seemed the 
line of duty, with all their future prospects 
broken, the three sisters found themselves again 
at Haworth together. There could be no ques- 
tion now of their keeping a school at Burlington ; 
if at all, it must be at Haworth, where their 
father could live with them. Miss Branwell's 
legacies would amply provide for the necessary 
alterations in the house ; the question before 
them was whether they should immediately be- 
gin these alterations, or first of all secure a 
higher education to themselves. 

At all events one must stay at home to keep 
house for Mr. Bronte. Emily quickly volun- 
teered to be the one. Her offer was welcome to 
all ; she was the most experienced housekeeper. 
Anne had a comfortable situation, which she 
might resume at the end of the Christmas holi- 
days, and Charlotte was anxious to get back to 
Brussels. 

It would certainly be of advantage to their 



138 



EMILY BRONTE. 



school, that cherished dream now so likely to 
come true, that the girls should be able to teach 
German, and that one of them at least should 
speak French with fluency and well. Mon- 
sieur Heger wrote to Mr. Bronte when Charlotte 
and Emily left, pointing out how much more 
stable and enduring their advantages would be- 
come, could they continue for another year at 
Brussels. "In a year," he says, "each of your 
daughters would be completely provided against 
the future ; each of them was acquiring at the 
same time instruction and the science to instruct. 
Mademoiselle Emily has been learning the piano, 
receiving lessons from the best master that we 
have in Brussels, and already she had little pu- 
pils of her own ; she was therefore losing at the 
same time a remainder of ignorance, and one, 
more embarrassing still, of timidity. Mademoi- 
selle Charlotte was beginning to give lessons in 
French, and was acquiring that assurance and 
aplomb so necessary to a teacher. One year 
more, at the most, and the work had been com- 
pleted, and completed well." 

Emily, as we know, refused the lure. Once 
at Haworth, she was not to be induced, by offer 
of any advantages, to quit her native heath. On 
the other hand, Charlotte desired nothing better. 
Hers was a nature very capable of affection, of 
gratitude, of sentiment. It would have been a 



THE RECALL. 1 39 

sore wrench to her to break so suddenly with her 
busy, quiet life in the old mansion, Rue d'Isabelle. 
Almost imperceptibly she had become fast friends 
with the place. Mary Taylor had left, it is true, 
and bright, engaging Martha slept there, too 
sound to hear her, in the Protestant cemetery. 
But in foreign, heretic, distant Brussels there 
were calling memories for the downright, plain 
little Yorkshire woman. She could not choose 
but hear. The blackavised, tender-hearted, fiery 
professor, for whom she felt the reverent, eager 
friendship that intellectual girls often give to a 
man much older than they; the doctor's family; 
even Madame Beck ; even the Belgian school- 
girls — she should like to see them all again. She 
did not perhaps realize how different a place 
Brussels would seem without her sister. And it 
would certainly be an advantage for the school 
that she should know German. For these, and 
many reasons, Charlotte decided to renounce a 
salary of ^50 a year offered her in England, and 
to accept that of ;£i6 which she would earn in 
Brussels. 

Thus it was determined that at the end of the 
Christmas holidays the three sisters were again 
to be divided. But first they were nearly three 
months together. 

Branwell was at home. Even yet at Haworth 
that was a pleasure and not a burden. His sis- 



140 



EMILY BRONTE. 



ters never saw him at his worst ; his vehement 
repentance brought conviction to their hearts. 
They still hoped for his future, still said to each 
other that men were different from women, and 
that such strong passions betokened a nature 
which, if once directed right, would be passion- 
ately right. They did not feel the miserable 
fiabbiness of his moral fibre ; did not know that 
the weak slip down when they try to stand, and 
cannot march erect. They were both too tender 
and too harsh with their brother, because they 
could not recognize what a mere, poor creature 
was this erring genius of theirs. 

Thus, when the first shock was over, the re- 
united family was most contented. Lightly, 
naturally, as an autumn leaf, the old aunt had 
fallen out of the household, her long duties over ; 
and they — though they loved and mourned her 
— they were freer for her departure. There 
was no restraint now on their actions, their 
opinions ; they were mistresses in their own 
home. It was a happy Christmas, though not 
free from burden. The sisters, parted for so 
long, had much experience to exchange, many 
plans to make. They had to revisit their old 
haunts on the . moors, white now with snow. 
There were walks to the library at Keighley for 
such books as had been added during their ab- 
sence. Ellen came to Haworth. Then, at the 



THE RECALL. 141 

end of January, 1843, Anne went back to her 
duties, and Charlotte set off alone for Brussels. 

Emily was left behind with Branwell ; but not 
for long. It must have been about this time 
that the ill-fated young man obtained a place 
as tutor in the house where Anne was governess. 
It appeared a most fortunate connection ; the 
family was well known for its respectable posi- 
tion, came of a stock eminent in good works, and 
the sisters might well believe that, under Anne's 
gentle influence and such favoring auspices, their 
brother would be led into the way of the just. 

Then Emily was alone in the gray house, save 
for her secluded father and old Tabby, now over 
seventy. She was not unhappy. No life could 
be freer than her own ; it was she that disposed, 
she too that performed most of the household 
work. She always got up first in the morning, 
and did the roughest part of the day's labor before 
frail old Tabby came down ; since kindness and 
thought for others were part of the nature of this 
unsocial, rugged woman. She did the household 
ironing and most of the cookery. She made the 
bread ; and her bread was famous in Haworth for 
its lightness and excellence. As she kneaded 
the dough, she would glance now and then at an 
open book propped up before her. It was her 
German lesson. But not always did she study 
out of books ; those who worked with her in 



142 



EMILY BRONTE. 



that kitchen, young girls called in to help in 
stress of business, remember how she would 
keep a scrap of paper, a pencil, at her side, and 
how, when the moment came that she could 
pause in her cooking or her ironing, she would 
jot down some impatient thought and then re- 
sume her work. With these girls she was always 
friendly and hearty — " pleasant, sometimes quite 
jovial like a boy," " so genial and kind, a little 
masculine," say my informants ; but of strangers 
she was exceedingly timid, and if the butcher's 
boy or the baker's man came to the kitchen door 
she would be off like a bird into the hall or the 
parlor till she heard their hob-nails clumping 
down the path. No easy getting sight of that 
rare bird. Therefore, it may be, the Haworth 
people thought more of her powers than of those 
of Anne or Charlotte, who might be seen at 
school any Sunday. They say: "A deal o' 
folk thout her th' clever'st o' them a', hasum- 
iver shoo wur so timid, shoo cudn't frame to let 
it aat." 

For amusements she had her pets and the 
garden. She always fed the animals herself : 
the old cat ; Flossy, Anne's favorite spaniel ; 
Keeper, the fierce bulldog, her own constant, 
dear companion, whose portrait, drawn by her 
spirited hand, is still extant. And the creatures 
on the moor were all, in a sense, her pets and 



THE RECALL. 1 43 

familiar with her. The intense devotion of this 
silent woman to all manner of dumb creatures 
has something pathetic, inexplicable, almost de- 
ranged. '* She never showed regard to any 
human creature ; all her love was reserved for 
animals," said some shallow jumper at conclu- 
sions to Mrs. Gaskell. Regard and help and 
stanch friendliness to all in need was ever char- 
acteristic of Emily Bronte ; yet between her 
nature and that of the fierce, loving, faithful 
Keeper, that of the wild moor-fowl, of robins 
that die in confinement, of quick-running hares, 
of cloud-sweeping, tempest-boding sea-mews, 
there was a natural likeness. 

The silent -growing flowers were also her 
friends. The little garden, open to all the 
winds that course over Lees Moor and Stil- 
lingworth Moor to the blowy summit of Ha- 
worth street — that little garden whose only 
bulwark against the storm was the gravestones 
outside the railing, the stunted thorns and cur- 
rant-bushes within — was nevertheless the home 
of many sweet and hardy flowers, creeping up 
under the house and close to the shelter of 
the bushes. So the days went swiftly enough 
in tending her house, her garden, her dumb 
creatures. In the evenings she would sit on 
the hearthrug in the lonely parlor, one arm 
thrown round Keeper's tawny neck, studying a 



144 EMILY BRONTE. 

book. For it was necessary to study. After 
the next Christmas hohdays the sisters hoped 
to reduce to practice their long-cherished vision 
of keeping school together. Letters from Brus- 
sels showed Emily that Charlotte was troubled, 
excited, full of vague disquiet. She would be 
glad, then, to be home, to use the instrument it 
had cost so much pains to perfect. A costly 
instrument, indeed, wrought with love, anguish, 
lonely fears, vanquished passion ; but in that 
time no one guessed that, not the school-teach- 
er's German, not the fluent French acquired 
abroad, was the real result of this terrible firing, 
but a novel to be called " Villette." 

Emily then, " Mine bonnie love," as Charlotte 
used to call her, cannot have been quite certain 
of this dear sister's happiness ; and as time went 
on, Anne's letters, too, began to give disquieting 
tidings. Not that her health was breaking down ; 
it was, as usual, Branwcll whose conduct dis- 
tressed his sisters. He had altered so strangely ; 
one day in the wildest spirits, the next moping 
in despair, giving himself mysterious airs of im- 
portance, expressing himself more than satisfied 
with his situation, smiling oddly, then, perhaps, 
the next moment, all remorse and gloom. Anne 
could not understand what ailed him, but feared 
some evil. 

At home, moreover, troubles slowly increased. 



THE RECALL. 



145 



Old Tabby grew very ill and could do no work ; 
the girl Hannah left ; Emily had all the busi- 
ness of investing the little property belonging 
to the three sisters since Miss Branwell's death ; 
worse still, old Mr. Bronte's health began to flag, 
his sight to fail. Worst of all — in that dark- 
ness, despair, loneliness — the old man, so Emily 
feared, acquired the habit of drinking, though 
not to excess, yet more than his abstemious past 
allowed. Doubtless she exaggerated her fears, 
with Branwell always present in her thoughts. 
But Emily grew afraid, alone at Haworth, re- 
sponsible, knowing herself deficient in that con- 
trolling influence so characteristic of her elder 
sister. Her burden of doubt was more than 
she could bear. She decided to write to Char- 
lotte. 

On the 2d of January, 1844, Charlotte arrived 
at Haworth. 

On the 23d of the month she wrote to her 
friend : 

" Every one asks me what I am going to do 
now that I am returned home, and every one 
seems to expect that I should immediately com- 
mence a school. In truth it is what I should 
wish to do. I desire it above all things, I have 
sufficient money for the undertaking, and I hope 
now sufficient qualifications to give me a fair 
chance of success ; yet I cannot yet permit 



146 



EMILY BRONTE. 



myself to enter upon life — to touch the object 
which seems now within my reach, and which 
I have been so long straining to attain. You 
will ask me why ? It is on papa's account ; he 
is now, as you know, getting old ; and it grieves 
me to tell you that he is losing his sight. I 
have felt for some months that I ought not to 
be away from him, and I feel now that it would 
be too selfish to leave him (at least as long as 
Branwell and Anne are absent) in order to pur- 
sue selfish interests of my own. With the help 
of God, I will try to deny myself in this matter, 
and to wait. 

"I suffered much before I left Brussels. I 
think, however long I live, I shall not forget 
what the parting with Monsieur Heger cost me. 
It grieved me so much to grieve him who has 
been so true, kind, disinterested a friend. . . . 
Haworth seems such a lonely quiet spot, buried 
away from the world. I no longer regard myself 
as young, indeed, I shall soon be twenty-eight ; 
and it seems as if I ought to be working, and 
braving the rough realities of the world, as 
other people do — " ^ 

Wait, eager Charlotte, there are in store for 
you enough and to spare of rude realities, enough 
of working and braving, in this secluded Ha- 
worth. No need to go forth in quest of dangers 

1 Mrs. Gaskell. 



THE RECALL. I47 

and trials. The air is growing thick with gloom 
round your mountain eyrie. High as it is, 
quiet, lonely, the storms of heaven and the 
storms of earth have found it out, to break 
there. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE PROSPECTUSES. 



Gradually Charlotte's first depression wore 
away. Long discussions with Emily, as they 
took their walks over the moors, long silent 
brooding of ways and means, as they sat to- 
gether in the parlor making shirts for Bran well, 
long thinking, brought new counsel. She went, 
moreover, to stay with her friend Ellen, and the 
change helped to restore her weakened health. 
She writes to her friend : 
"Dear Nell, "March 25. 

" I got home safely and was not too much 
tired on arriving at Haworth. I feel rather 
better to-day than I have been, and in time I 
hope to regain more strength. I found Emily 
and papa well, and a letter from Branwell inti- 
mating that he and Anne are pretty well too. 
Emily is much obliged to you for the seeds you 
sent. She wishes to know if the Sicilian pea 
and the crimson cornflower are hardy flowers, 
or if they are delicate and should be sown in 
warm and sheltered situations. Write to me 



THE PROSPECTUSES. 149 

to-morrow and let me know how you all are, if 
your mother continues to get better. . . . 

" Good morning, dear Nell, I shall say no 
more to you at present. 

'' C. Bronte." 

" Monday morning. 

*' Our poor little cat has been ill two days and 
is just dead. It is piteous to see even an animal 
lying lifeless. Emily is sorry." 

Side by side with all these lighter cares went 
on the schemes for the school. At last the two 
sisters determined to begin as soon as they saw 
a fair chance of getting pupils. They began 
the search in good earnest ; but fortunately, 
postponed the necessary alterations in the house 
until they had the secure promise of, at any rate, 
three or four. Then their demands lessened 
as day by day that chance became more difficult 
and fainter. In early summer Charlotte writes: 
" As soon as I can get a chance of only 07ie 
pupil, I will have cards of terms printed and 
will commence the repairs necessary in the 
house. I wish all to be done before the winter. 
I think of fixing the board and Enghsh educa- 
tion at £,2^ per annum." 

Still no pupil was heard of, but the girls went 
courageously on, writing to every mother of 
daughters with whom they could claim acquaint- 



I50 EMILY BRONTE. 

ance. But, alas, it was the case with one, that 
her children were already at school in Liverpool, 
with another that her child had just been prom- 
ised to Miss C, with a third that she thought 
the undertaking praiseworthy, but Haworth was 
so very remote a spot. In vain did the girls 
explain that from some points of view the re- 
tired situation was an advantage ; since, had 
they set up school in some fashionable place, 
they would have had house-rent to pay, and 
could not possibly have offered an excellent 
education for £^2<, 3, year. Parents are an ex- 
pectant people. Still, every lady promised to 
recommend the school to mothers less squeam- 
ish, or less engaged ; and, knowing how well 
they would show themselves worthy of the 
chance, once they had obtained it, Charlotte 
and Emily took heart to hope. 

The holidays arrived and still nothing was 
settled. Anne came home and helped in the 
laying of schemes and writing of letters — but, 
alas, Branwell also came home, irritable, extrav- 
agant, wildly gay, or gloomily moping. His 
sisters could no longer blind themselves to the 
fact that he drank, drank habitually, to excess. 
And Anne had fears — vague, terrible, forebod- 
ing — which she could not altogether make plain. 

By this time they had raised the charge to 
£SSi considering, perhaps, that their first offer 



THE PROSPECTUSES. 151 

had been so low as to discredit their attempt. 
But still they got no favorable answers. It was 
hard, for the ' girls had not been chary of time, 
money, or trouble to fit themselves for their 
occupation. Looking round they could count 
up many schoolmistresses far less thoroughly 
equipped. Only the Brontes had no interest. 

Meanwhile Branwell amused himself as best 
he could. There was always the "Black Bull," 
with its admiring circle of drink-fellows, and the 
girls who admired Patrick's courteous bow and 
Patrick's winning smile. Good people all, who 
little dreamed how much vice, how much misery, 
they were encouraging by their approbation. Mr. 
Grundy, too, came over now and then to see his 
old friend. " I knew them all," he says — " the 
father, upright, handsome, distantly courteous, 
white-haired, tall ; knowing me as his son's 
friend, he would treat me in the Grandisonian 
fashion, coming himself down to the little inn to 
invite me, a boy, up to his house, where I would 
be coldly uncomfortable until I could escape with 
Patrick Branwell to the moors. The daughters 
— distant and distrait, large of nose, small of 
figure, red of hair (!), prominent of spectacles ; 
showing great intellectual development, but with 
eyes constantly cast down, very silent, painfully 
retiring. This was about the time of their first 
literary adventures, say 1843 or 1844."^ 

1 Pictures of the Past. 



152 



EMILY BRONTE, 



But of literary adventure there was at present 
little thought. The school still occupied their 
thoughts and dreams. At last, no pupil coming 
forward, some cards of terms were printed and 
given for distribution to the friends of Charlotte 
and Anne ; Emily had no friends. 

There are none left of them, those pitiful 
cards of terms never granted ; records of such 
unfruitful hopes. They have fitly vanished, like 
the ghosts of children never born ; and quicker 
still to vanish was the dream that called them 
forth. The weeks went on, and every week of 
seven letterless mornings, every week of seven 
anxious nights, made the sisters more fully aware 
that notice and employment would not come to 
them in the way they had dreamed ; made them 
think it well that Branvvell's home should not be 
the dwelling of innocent children. 

Anne went back to her work, leaving the fu- 
ture as uncertain as before. 

In October Charlotte, always the spokes- 
woman, writes again to her friend and diligent 
helper in this matter : 

"Dear Nell, 

" I, Emily, and Anne are truly obliged to you 
for the efforts you have made in our behalf ; and 
if you have not been successful you are only 
like ourselves. Every one wishes us well ; but 



THE PROSPECTUSES, 



153 



there are no pupils to be had. We have no 
present intention, however, of breaking our 
hearts on the subject; still less of feeling mor- 
tified at our defeat. The effort must be bene- 
ficial, whatever the result may be, because it 
teaches us experience and an additional knowl- 
edge of this world. 

" I send you two additional circulars, and will 
send you two more, if you desire it, when I write 
again." 

Those four circulars also came to nothing ; it 
was now more than six months since the three 
sisters had begun their earnest search for pupils : 
more than three years since they had taken for 
the ruling aim of their endeavors the formation 
of this little school. Not one pupil could they' 
secure ; not one promise. At last they knew 
that they were beaten. 

In November Charlotte writes again to Ellen : 

" We have made no alterations yet in our 
house. It would be folly to do so while there 
is so little likelihood of our ever getting pupils. 
I fear you are giving yourself too much trouble 
on our account. 

" Depend on it, if you were to persuade a mama 
to bring her child to Haworth, the aspect of the 
place would frighten her, and she would probably 
take the dear girl back with her instanter. We 
are glad that we have made the attempt, and we 



154 



EMILY BRONTE, 



will not be cast down because it has not suc- 
ceeded." ^ 

There was no more to be said, only to put 
carefully by, as one puts by the thoughts of an 
interrupted marriage, all the dreams that had 
filled so many months ; only to lay aside in a 
drawer, as one lays aside the long-sewn-at gar- 
ments of a still-born child, the plans drawn out 
for the builder, the printed cards, the lists of 
books to get ; only to face again a future of 
separate toil among strangers, to renounce the 
vision of a home together. 

1 Mrs. Gaskell. 



CHAPTER XI. 



BRANWELLS FALL. 



As the spring grew upon the moors, dappling 
them with fresh verdant shoots, clearing the sky- 
overhead, loosening the winds to rush across 
them ; as the beautiful season grew ripe in 
Haworth, every one of its days made clearer 
to the two anxious women waiting there in what 
shape their blurred foreboding would come true 
at last. They seldom spoke of Branwell now. 

It was a hard and anxious time, ever expectant 
of an evil just at hand. Minor troubles, too, 
gathered round this shapeless boded grief : Mr. 
Bronte was growing blind ; Charlotte, ever ner- 
vous, feared the same fate, and could do but 
little sewing with her weak, cherished eyesight. 
Anne's letters told of health worn out by con- 
stant, agonizing suspicion. It was Emily, that 
strong bearer of burdens, on whom the largest 
share of work was laid. 

Charlotte grew really weak as the summer 
came. Her sensitive, vehement nature felt anx- 
iety as a physical pain. She was constantly with 



156 



EMILY BRONTE. 



her father ; her spirit sank with his, as month by- 
month his sight grew sensibly weaker. The old 
man, to whom his own importance was so dear, 
suffered keenly, indeed, from the fear of actual 
blindness, and more from the horror of depen- 
dence than from the dread of pain or privation. 
*' He fears he will be nothing in the parish," 
says sorrowful Charlotte. And as her father, 
never impatient, never peevish, became more 
deeply cast down and anxious, she, too, became 
nervous and fearful ; she, too, dejected. 

At last, when June came and brought no 
brightness to that gray old house, with the in- 
visible shadow ever hovering above it, Charlotte 
was persuaded to seek rest and change in the 
home of her friend near Leeds. 

Anne was home now; she had come back 
ill, miserable. She had suspicions that made 
her feel herself degraded, pure soul, concerning 
her brother's relation with her employer's wife. 
Many letters had passed between them, through 
her hands too. Too often had she heard her 
unthinking little pupils threaten their mother 
into more than customary indulgence, saying : 
'• Unless you do as we wish, we shall tell papa 
about Mr. Bronte." The poor girl felt herself an 
involuntary accomplice to that treachery, that 
deceit. 

To lie down at night under the roof, to break 



BRANWELLS FALL. 



157 



by day the bread of the good, sick, bedridden 
man, whose honor, she could not but fear, was 
in jeopardy from her own brother, such dire 
strain was too great for that frail, dejected na- 
ture. And yet to say openly to herself that 
Bran well had committed this disgrace — it was 
impossible. Rather must her suspicions be the 
morbid promptings of a diseased mind. She 
was wicked to have felt them. Poor, gentle 
Anne, sweet, "prim, little body," such scenes, 
such unhallowed vicinities of lust, were not for 
you ! At last sickness came and set her free. 
She went home. 

Home, with its constant labor, pure air of 
good works ; home, with its sickness and love, 
its dread for others and noble sacrifice of self ; 
how welcome was it to her wounded spirit ! 
And yet this infinitely hghter torment was 
wearing Charlotte out. They persuaded her to 
go away, and, when she had yielded, strove to 
keep her away. 

Emily writes to Ellen in July : 

" Dear Miss Nussey, — If you have set your 
heart on Charlotte staying another week, she 
has our united consent. I, for one, will take 
everything easy on Sunday. I am glad she is 
enjoying herself; let her make the most of the 
next seven days to return stout and hearty. 



158 



EMILY BRONTE. 



Love to her and you from Anne and myself, 
and tell her all are well at home. — Yours, 

" Emily Bronte." 

Charlotte stayed the extra week, benefiting 
largely thereby. She started for home, and 
enjoyed her journey, for she travelled with a 
French gentleman, and talketl again with delight 
the sweet language which had left such linger- 
ing echoes in her memory, which forbade her to 
feel quite contented any more in her secluded 
Yorkshire home. Slight as it was, the little ex- 
citement did her gootl ; feeling brave and ready 
to face and fight with a legion of shadows, she 
reached the gate of her own home, went in. 
Branwell was there. 

He had been sent hor\ie a day or two before, 
apparently for a holiday. He must have known 
that some discovery had been made at last ; he 
must have felt he never would return. Anne, 
too, must have had some misgivings ; yet the 
worst was not known yet, Emily, at least, could 
not guess it. Not for long this truce with open 
disgrace. The very day of Charlotte's return a 
letter had come for Branwell from his employer. 
All had been found out. This letter commanded 
Branwell never to see again the mother of the 
children under his care, never set foot in her 
home, never write or speak to her. Branwell, 



BRANWELLS FALL. 



159 



who loved her passionately, had in that mo- 
ment no thought for the shame, the black 
disgrace, he had brought on his father's house. 
He stormed, raved, swore he could not live 
without her; cried out against her next for 
staying with her husband. Then prayed the 
sick man might die soon ; they would yet be 
happy. Ah, he would never see her again ! 

A strange scene in the quiet parlor of a 
country vicarage, this anguish of guilty love, 
these revulsions from shameful ecstasy to 
shameful despair. Branwell raved on, delirious, 
agonized ; and the blind father listened, sick at 
heart, maybe self-reproachful ; and the gentle 
sister listened, shuddering, as if she saw hell 
lying open at her feet. Emily listened, too, in- 
dignant at the treachery, horrified at the shame; 
yet with an immense pity in her fierce and lov- 
ing breast. 

To this scene Charlotte entered. 

Charlotte, with her vehement sense of right 3 
Charlotte, with her sturdy indignation ; when 
she at last understood the whole guilty cor- 
rupted passion that had wrecked two homes, she 
turned away with something in her heart sud- 
denly stiffened, dead. It was her passionate love 
for this shameful, erring brother, once as dear 
to her as her own soul. Yet she was very pa- 
tient. She v/rites to a friend quietly and with- 
out too much disdain : 



l6o EMILY BRONTE. 

" Wc have had sad work with Branwcll. He 
thought of nothing but stunning or drowning 
liis agony of mind" (in what fashion, the reader 
knows ere now), "no one in tins house could 
have rest, and at last we have been obliged to 
send him from home for a week, with some one 
to look after him. lie has written to me this 
morning, expressing some sense of contrition 
. . . but as long as he remains at home, I 
scarce dare ho{')e for ])eace in the house. We 
must all, I fear, prepare foi- a season of distress 
and disquietude." ^ 

A weary and a hopeless time. Branwcll came 
back, belter in body, but in nowise holier in 
mind. His one hope was that his enemy might 
die, die soon, and that things might be as they 
had been before. No thought of repentance. 
What money he had, he spent in gin or opium, 
anything to deaden recollection. A woman still 
lives at Haworth, who used to help in the house- 
work at the " Black Bull." She still remembers 
how, in the early morning, pale, red-eyed, he 
would come into the passage of the inn, with 
his beautiful bow and sweep of the lifted hat, 
with his courteous smile and ready "Good morn- 
ing, Anne ! " Then he would turn to the bar, 
and feeling in his pockets for what small moneys 
he might have — sixpence, eightpence, tenpence, 
1 Mrs. Gaskell. 



DRANWELVS FALL. i6£ 

as the case might be — he would order so much 
gin and sit there drinking till it was all gone, 
then still sit there silent; or sometimes he would 
passionately speak of the woman he loved, of 
her beauty, sweetness, of how he longed to see 
her again ; he loved to speak of her even to a 
dog ; he would talk of her by the hour to his 
dog. Yet — lest we pity this real despair — let 
us glance at one of this man's letters. How 
could such vulgar weakness, such corrupt and 
loathsome sentimentality, such maudlin Micaw- 
ber-penitence, yet feel so much ! No easy task 
to judge of a misery too perverse for pity, too 
sincere for absolute contempt. 

It is again to Mr. Grundy that he writes : 
"Since I last shook hands with you in Halifax, 
two summers ago, my life, till lately, has been 
one of apparent happiness and indulgence. You 
will ask — 'Why does he complain then.?' I 
can only reply by showing the undercurrent of 
distress which bore my bark to a whirlpool, de- 
spite the surface-waves of life that seemed float- 
ing me to peace. In a letter begun in the spring 
of 1843" (-^^^Z 1845 •'') "and never finished, ow- 
ing to incessant attacks of illness, I tried to tell 
you that I was tutor to the son of a wealthy 
gentleman whose wife is sister to the wife of 

, an M.P., and the cousin of Lord . 

This lady (though her husband detested me) 



1 62 EMILY BRONTE. 

showed me a degree of kindness which, when 
I was deeply grieved one day at her husband's 
conduct, ripened into declarations of more than 
ordinary feeling. My admiration of her mental 
and personal attractions, my knowledge of 
her unselfish sincerity, her sweet temper, and 
unwearied care for others, with but unrequited 
return where most should have been given . . . 
although she is seventeen years my senior, all 
combined to an attachment on my part, and led 
to reciprocations which I had little looked for. 
Three months since I received a furious letter 
from my employer, threatening to shoot me if I 
returned from my vacation which I was passing 
at home ; and letters from her lady's-maid and 
physician informed me of the outbreak, only 
checked by her firm courage and resolution that 
whatever harm came to her none should come 
to me. . . . I have lain for nine long weeks, 
utterly shattered in body and broken down in 
mind. The probability of her becoming free to 
give me herself and estate never rose to drive 
away the prospect of her decline under her 
present grief. I dreaded, too, the wreck of my 
mind and body, which — God knows — during a 
short life have been most severely tried. Eleven 
continuous nights of sleepless horror reduced 
me to almost blindness, and being taken into 
Wales to recover, the sweet scenery, the sea, 



BRANWELHS FALL. 163 

the sound of music, caused me fits of unspeak- 
able distress. You will say : * What a fool ! ' 
But if you knew the many causes that I have 
for sorrow, which I cannot even hint at here, you 
would perhaps pity as well as blame. At the 
kind request of Mr. Macaulay and Mr. Baines, 
I have striven to arouse my mind by writing 
something worthy of being read, but I really 
cannot do so. Of course you will despise the 
writer of all this. I can only answer that the 
writer does the same and would not wish to live, 
if he did not hope that work and change may 
yet restore him. 

"Apologizing sincerely for what seems like 
whining egotism, and hardly daring to hint about 
days when, in your company, I could sometimes 
sink the thoughts which ' remind me of departed 
days,' I fear 'departed never to return,' I re- 
main, &c." 1 

Unhappy Branwell ! some consolation he de- 
rives in his utmost sorrow from the fact that the 
lady of his love can employ her own lady's-maid 
and physician to write letters to her exiled lover. 
It is clear that his pride is gratified by this ir- 
regular association with a lord. He can afford 
to wait, stupefied with drink and drugs, till 
that happy time shall come when he can step 
forward and claim " herself and estate," hence- 

1 Pictures of the Past. 



1 64 EMILY BRONTE. 

forward Branwell Bronte, Esq., J. P., and a person 
of position in the county. Such paradisal future 
dawns above this present purgatory of pains and 
confusion. 

That phrase concerning " herself and estate " 
is peculiarly apocalyptic. It sheds a quite new 
light upon a fact which, in Mrs. Gaskell's time, 
was regarded as a proof that some remains of 
conscience still stirred within this miserable fel- 
low. Some months after his dismissal, towards 
the end of this unhappy year of 1845, ^^ i^'^^t this 
lady a.t Harrogate by appointment. It is said 
that she proposed a flight together, ready to 
forfeit all her grandeur. It was Branwell who 
advised patience, and a little longer waiting. 
Maybe, though she herself was dear, ''although 
seventeen years my senior," " herself and estate" 
was estimably dearer. 

And yet he was in earnest, yet it was a ques- 
tion of life and death, of heaven or hell, with 
him. If he could not have her, he would have 
nothing. He would ruin himself and all he could. 
Most like, in this rage of vain despair, some pas- 
sionate baby that shrieks, and hits, and tears, 
convulsed because it may not have the moon. 

Small wonder that Charlotte's coldness, aggra- 
vated by continual outrage on Branwell's part, 
gradually became contempt and silence. In pro- 
portion as she had exulted in this brother, hoped 



BRANWELL'S FALL. 



165 



all for him, did she now shrink from him, bitterly 
chill at heart. 

" I begin to fear," she says, the once ambitious 
sister, " that he has rendered himself incapable 
of filling any respectable station in life." She 
cannot ask Ellen to come to see her, because he 
is in the house. "And while he is here, yoit, 
shall not come. I am more confirmed in that 
resolution the more I see of him. I wish I could 
say one word to you in his favor, but I cannot. 
I will hold my tongue." ^ 

For some while she hoped that the crisis would 
pass, and that then — no matter how humbly, 
the more obscurely the better — he would at 
least earn honest bread away from home. Such 
was not his intention. He professed to be too ill 
to leave Haworth ; and ill, no doubt, he was, from 
continual eating of opium and daily drinking of 
drams. He stuck to his comfortable quarters, 
to the "Black Bull" just across the churchyard, 
heedless of what discomfort he gave to others. 
" Branwell offers no prospect of hope," says Char- 
lotte, again. " How can we be more comfortable 
so long as Branwell stays at home and degener- 
ates instead of improving } It has been inti- 
mated that he would be received again where he 
was formerly stationed if he would behave more 
steadily, but he refuses to make the effort. He 

1 Mrs. Gaskell. 



1 66 EMILY BRONTE. 

will not work, and at home he is a drain on every 
resource, an impediment to all happiness. But 
there's no use in complaining — " 

Small use indeed ; yet once more she forced 
herself to make the hopeless effort, after some 
more than customary outbreak of the man who 
was drinking himself into madness and ruin. 
She writes in the March of 1846 to her friend 
and comforter, Ellen : 

*' I went into the room where Bran well was, to 
speak to him, about a hour after I got home ; it 
was very forced work to address him. I might 
have spared myself the trouble, as he took no 
notice, and made no reply ; he was stupefied. 
My fears were not vain. I hear that he got a 
sovereign while I have been away, under pre- 
tence of paying a pressing debt ; he went imme- 
diately and changed it at a public-house, and has 
employed it as was to be expected . . . con- 
cluded her account by saying that he was a 
' hopeless being.' It is too true. In his present 
state it is scarcely possible to stay in the room 
where he is." ^ 

It must be about that time that she forever 
gave up expostulation or complaint in this mat- 
ter. "■ I will hold my tongue," she had said, and 
she kept her word. For more than two years 
she held an utter silence to him ; living under 

1 Mrs. Gaskell. 



BRANWELLS FALL. 



167 



the same roof, witnessing day by day his ever- 
deepening degradation, no syllable crossed her 
lips to him. Since she could not (for the sake 
of those she loved and might comfort) refuse the 
loathsome daily touch and presence of sin, she 
endured it, but would have no fellowship there- 
with. She had no right over it, it none over 
her. She looked on speechless ; that man was 
dead to her. 

Anne, in whom the fibre of indignation was 
less strong, followed less sternly in her sister's 
wake. 

" She had," says Charlotte, in her * Memoir,' 
"in the course of her life been called upon to 
contemplate, near at hand and for a long time, 
the terrible effects of talents misused and facul- 
ties abused ; hers was naturally a sensitive, re- 
served, and dejected nature ; what she saw went 
very deeply into her mind ; it did her harm." 

The spectacle of this harm, coming undeserved 
to so dear, frail, and innocent a creature, absorbed 
all Charlotte's pity. There was none left for 
Branwell. 

But there was one woman's heart strong 
enough in its compassion to bear the daily dis- 
gusts, weaknesses, sins of Branwell's life, and 
yet persist in aid and affection. Night after 
night, when Mr. Bronte was in bed, when Anne 
and Charlotte had gone up-stairs to their room, 



1 68 EMILY BRONTE. 

Emily still sat up, waiting. She often had very- 
long to wait in the silent house before the stag- 
gering tread, the muttered oath, the fumbling 
hand at the door, bade her rouse herself from 
her sad thoughts and rise to let in the prodigal, 
and lead him in safety to his rest. But she never 
Wearied in her kindness. In that silent home, it 
was the silent Emily who had ever a cheering 
word for Branwell ; it was Emily who still re- 
membered that he was her brother, without that 
remembrance freezing her heart to numbness. 
She still hoped to win him back by love ; and 
the very force and 'sincerity of his guilty passion 
(an additional horror and sin in her sisters' eyes) 
was a claim on Emily, ever sympathetic to violent 
feeling. Thus it was she who, more than the 
others, became familiarized with the agony, and 
doubts, and shame of that tormented soul ; and 
if, in her little knowledge of the world, she im- 
agined such wrested passions to be natural, it is 
not upon her, of a certainty, that the blame of 
her pity shall be laid. 

As the time went on, and Branwell grew worse 
and wilder, it was well for the lonely watcher 
that she was strong. At last he grew ill, and 
would be content to go to bed early, and lie there 
half-stupefied with opium and drink. One such 
night, their father and Branwell being in bed, the 
sisters came up-stairs to sleep. Emily had gone 



BRANWELVS FALL. 169 

on first into the little passage room where she 
still slept, when Charlotte, passing Branwell's 
partly opened door, saw a strange bright flare 
inside. 

" Oh, Emily ! " she cried, " the house is on 
fire ! " 

Emily came out, her fingers at her lips. She 
had remembered her father's great horror of fire; 
it was the one dread of a brave man ; he would 
have no muslin curtains, no light dresses in his 
house. She came out silently and saw the flame; 
then, very white and determined, dashed from 
her room down-stairs into the passage, where 
every night full pails of water stood. One in 
each hand, she came up-stairs. Anne, Charlotte, 
the young servant, shrinking against the wall, 
huddled together in amazed horror — Emily 
went straight on and entered the blazing room. 
In a short while the bright light ceased to flare. 
Fortunately the flame had not reached the wood- 
work : drunken Branwell, turning in his .bed, 
must have upset the light on to his sheets, for 
they and the bed were all on fire, and he uncon- 
scious in the midst when Emily went in, even 
as Jane Eyre found Mr. Rochester. But it was 
no reasonable, thankful human creature with 
whom Emily had to deal. After a few long mo- 
ments, those still standing in the passage saw 
her stagger out, white, with singed clothes, half- 



170 



EMILY BRONTE-. 



carrying in her arms, half-dragging, her besotted 
brother. She placed him in her bed, and took 
away the Hght ; then assuring the hysterical girls 
that there could be no further danger, she bade 
them go and rest — but where she slept herself 
that night no one remembers now. 

It must be very soon after this that Branwell 
began to sleep in his father's room. The old 
man, courageous enough, and conceiving that his 
presence might be some slight restraint on the 
drunken furies of his unhappy son, persisted in 
this arrangement, though often enough the girls 
begged him to relinquish it, knowing well enough 
what risk of life he ran. Not infrequently Bran- 
well would declare that either he or his father 
should be dead before the morning ; and well 
might it happen that in his insensate delirium he 
should murder the blind old man. 

" The sisters often listened for the report of a 
pistol in the dead of the night, till watchful eye 
and hearkening ear grew heavy and dull with 
the perpetual strain upon their nerves. In the 
mornings young Bronte would saunter out, say- 
ing, with a drunkard's incontinence of speech, 
•The poor old man and I have had a terrible 
night of it. He does his best — the poor old 
man ! — but it's all over with m§:' " (whimpering) 
" ' it's her fault, her fault' " ^ 

1 Mrs. GaskelL 



BRANWELLS FALL. 



171 



And in such fatal progress two years went on, 
bringing the suffering in that house ever lower, 
ever deeper, sinking it day by day from bad to 
worse. 



CHAPTER XII. 



WRITING POETRY. 



While Emily Bronte's hands were full of trivial 
labor, while her heart was buried with its charge 
of shame and sorrow, think not that her mind 
was more at rest. She had always used her lei- 
sure to study or create ; and the dreariness of 
existence made this inner life of hers doubly 
precious now. There is a tiny copy of the 
' Poems ' of Ellis, Currer, and Acton Bell, which 
was Emily's own, marked with her name and 
with the date of every poem carefully written 
under its title, in her own cramped and tidy writ- 
ing. It has been of great use to me in classify- 
ing the order of these poems, chiefly hymns to 
imagination, Emily's " Comforter," her " Fairy- 
love ; " beseeching her to light such a light in 
the soul that the dull clouds of earthly skies may 
seem of scant significance. 

The light that should be lit was indeed of 
supernatural brightness ; a flame from under the 
earth ; a flame of lightning from the skies ; a 
beacon of awful warning. Although so much is 



WRITING POETRY. 



173 



scarcely evident in these early poems, gleaming 
with fantastic glow-worm fires, fairy prettinesses, 
or burning as solemnly and pale as tapers lit in 
dayHght round a bier, yet, in whatever shape, 
" the light that never was on sea or land," the 
strange transfiguring shine of imagination, is 
present there. 

No one in the house ever saw what things 
Emily wrote in the moments of pause from her 
pastry-making, in those brief sittings under the 
currants, in those long and lonely watches for 
her drunken brother. She did not write to be 
read, but only to relieve a burdened heart. " One 
day," writes Charlotte in 1850, recollecting the 
near, vanished past, " one day in the autumn of 
1845, I accidentally lighted on a manuscript vol- 
ume of verse in my sister Emily's handwriting. 
Of course I was not surprised, knowing that she 
could and did write verse. I looked it over, and 
something more than surprise seized me, — a 
deep conviction that these were not common 
effusions, not at all like the poetry women gener- 
ally write. I thought them condensed and terse, 
vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they had 
also a peculiar music, wild, melancholy, and 
elevating." 

Very true ; these poems with their surplus of 
imagination, their instinctive music and irregular 
rightness of form, their sweeping impressiveness, 



174 



EMILY BRONTE. 



effects of landscape, their scant allusions to dog- 
ma or perfidious man, are, indeed, not at all like 
the poetry women generally write. The hand 
that painted this single line, 

" The dim moon struggling in the sky," 

should have shaken hands with Coleridge. The 
voice might have sung in concert with Blake 
that sang this single bit of a song : 

" Hope was but a timid friend ; 

She sat without the grated den, 
Watching how my fate would tend, 
Even as selfish-hearted men. 

" She was cruel in her fear ; 

Through the bars, one dreary day, 
I looked out to see her there, 
And she turned her flice away I " 

Had the poem ended here it would have been 
perfect, but it and many more of these lyrics 
have the uncertainty of close that usually marks 
early work. Often incoherent, too, the pictures 
of a dream rapidly succeeding each other with- 
out logical connection ; yet scarcely marred by 
the incoherence, since the effect they seek to 
produce is not an crfiotion, not a conviction, but 
an impression of beauty, or horror, or ecstasy. 
The uncertain outlines are bathed in a vague 
golden air of imagination, and are shown to us 
with the magic touch of a Coleridge, a Leopardi 



WRITING POETRY. 



175 



— the touch which gives a mood, a scene, with 
scarce an obvious detail of either mood or scene. 
We may not understand the purport of the song, 
we understand the feehng that prompted the 
song, as, having done with reading ' Kubla 
Khan,' there remains in our mind, not the pic- 
tured vision of palace or dancer, but a personal 
participation in Coleridge's heightened fancy, a 
settingron of reverie, an impression. 

Read this poem, written in October, 1845 — 

THE PHILOSOPHER. 

" Enough of thought, philosopher, 

Too long hast thou been dreaming 
Unlightened, in this chamber drear, 
While summer's sun is beaming ! 
Space-sweeping soul, what sad refrain 
Concludes thy musings once again? 

** Oh, for the time when I shall sleep 

Without identity, 
And never care how rain may steep, 

Or snow may cover me ! 
No promised heaven, these wild desires 

Could all, or half fulfil ; 
No threatened hell, with quenchless fires, 

Subdue this quenchless will I 

" So said I, and still say the same ; 

Still, to my death, will say — 
Three gods, within this little frame, 

Are warring night and day ; 
Heaven could not hold them all, and yet 

They all are held in me, 



1/6 



EMILY BRONTE. 

And must be mine till I forget 

My present entity ! 
Oh, for the time when in my breast 

Their struggles will be o'er ! 
Oh, for the day when I shall rest, 

And never suffer more ! 

' I saw a spirit, standing, man, 

Where thou dost stand — an hour ago, 
And round his feet three rivers ran, 

Of equal depth and equal flow — 
A golden stream, and one like blood. 

And one like sapphire seemed to be ; 
But where they joined their triple flood 

It tumbled in an inky sea. 
The spirit sent his dazzling gaze 

Down through that ocean's gloomy night ; 
Then, kindling all, with sudden blaze, 

The glad deep sparkled wide and bright — 
White as the sun, far, far more fair. 

Than its divided sources were ! 

And even for that spirit, seer, 

I've watched and sought my life-time long ; 
Sought him in heaven, hell, earth and air — 

An endless search, and always wrong I 
Had I but seen his glorious eye 

Once light the clouds that 'wilder me, 
I ne'er had raised this coward cry 

To cease to think, and cease to be ; 
I ne'er had called oblivion blest, 

Nor, stretching eager hands to death, 
Implored to change for senseless rest 

This sentient soul, this living breath — 
Oh, let me die — that power and will 

Their cruel strife may close ; 
And conquered good and conquering ill 

Be lost in one repose ! " 



WRITING POETRY. 



177 



Some semblance of coherence may, no doubt, 
be given to this poem by making the three first 
and the last stanzas to be spoken by the ques- 
tioner, and the fourth by the philosopher. Even 
so, the subject has little charm. What we care 
for is the surprising energy with which the suc- 
cessive images are projected, the earnest ring of 
the verse, the imagination which invests all its 
changes. The man and the philosopher are but 
the clumsy machinery of the magic-lantern, the 
more kept out of view the better. 

"Conquered good and conquering ill!" A 
thought that must often have risen in Emily's 
mind during this year and those succeeding. A 
gloomy thought, sufficiently strange in a country 
parson's daughter ; one destined to have a great 
result in her work. 

Of these visions which make the larger half of 
Emily's contribution to the tiny book, none has 
a more eerie grace than this day-dream of the 
5th of March, 1844, sampled here by a few verses 
snatched out of their setting rudely enough : 

" On a sunny brae, alone I lay 
One summer afternoon ; 
It was the marriage-time of May 
With her young lover, June. 



" The trees did wave their plumy crests. 
The glad birds carolled clear; 



178 EMILY BRONTE. 

And I, of all the wedding guests. 
Was only sullen there. 

" Now, whether it were really so, 
I never could be sure, 
But as in fit of peevish woe, 
I stretched me on the moor, 

" A thousand thousand gleaming fires 
Seemed kindling in the air; 
A thousand thousand silvery lyres 
Resounded far and near : 

" Methought, the very breath I breathed 
Was full of sparks divine. 
And all my heather-couch was wreathed 
By that celestial shine ! 

" And, while the wide earth echoing rung 
To their strange minstrelsy, 
The little glittering spirits sung, 
Or seemed to sing, to me." 



What they sang is indeed of little moment 
enough — a strain of the vague pantheistic sen- 
timent common always to poets, but her manner 
of representing the little airy symphony is charm- 
ing. It recalls the fairy-like brilliance of the 
moors at sunset, when the sun, slipping behind 
a western hill, streams in level rays on to an 
opposite crest, gilding with pale gold the fawn- 
colored faded grass ; tangled in the film of lilac 
seeding grasses, spread, like the bloom on a grape, 
over all the heath ; sparkling on the crisp edges 



WRITING POETRY. ly^ 

of the heather blooms, pure white, wild-rose 
color, shell-tinted, purple ; emphasizing every 
gray-green spur of the undergrowth of ground- 
lichen ; striking every scarlet-splashed, white- 
budded spray of ling: an iridescent, shimmering, 
dancing effect of white and pink and purple 
flowers ; of lilac bloom, of gray-green and whit- 
ish-gray buds and branches, all crisply moving 
and dancing together in the breeze on the hill- 
top. I have quoted that windy night in a line — 

"The dim moon struggling in the sky." 

Here is another verse to show how well she 
watched from her bedroom's wide window the 
gray far-stretching skies above the black far- 
stretching moors — 

" And oh, how slow that keen-eyed star 
Has tracked the chilly gray ; 
What, watching yet! how very far 
The morning lies away." 

Such direct, vital touches recall well-known 
passages in ' Wuthering Heights : ' Catharine's 
pictures of the moors ; that exquisite allusion to 
Gimmerton Chapel bells, not to be heard on the 
moors in summer when the trees are in leaf, but 
always heard at Wuthering Heights on quiet 
days following a great thaw or a season of steady 
rain. 

But not, alas ! in such fantasy, in such loving 



l8o EMILY BRONTE. 

intimacy with nature, might much of Emily's 
sorrowful days be passed. Nor was it in her 
nature that all her dreams should be cheerful. 
The finest songs, the most peculiarly her own, 
are all of defiance and mourning, moods so natu- 
ral to her that she seems to scarcely need the 
intervention of words in their confession. The 
wild, melancholy, and elevating music of which 
Charlotte wisely speaks is strong enough to 
move our very hearts to sorrow in such verses 
as the following, things which would not touch 
us at all were they written in prose ; which have 
no personal note. Yet listen — 

*' Death ! that struck when I was most confiding 
In my certain faith of joy to be — 
Strike again, Time's withered branch dividing 
From the fresh root of Eternity ! 

"Leaves, upon Time's branch, were growing brightly, 
Full of sap, and full of silver dew ; 
Birds beneath its shelter gathered nightly ; 
Daily round its flowers the wild bees flew. 

" Sorrow passed, and plucked the golden blossom." 

Solemn, haunting with a passion infinitely 
beyond the mere words, the mere image ; be- 
cause, in some wonderful way, the very music 
of the verse impresses, reminds us, declares the 
holy inevitable losses of death. 

A finer poem yet is * Remembrance,' written 
two years later, in the March of 1845 \ tiere the 



WRITING POETRY. i8i 

words and the thought are worthy of the music 
and the mood. It has vital passion in it ; though 
it can scarcely be personal passion, since, " fif- 
teen wild Decembers" before 1845, Emily Bronte 
was a girl of twelve years old, companionless, 
save for still living sisters, Branwell, her aunt, 
and the vicarage servants. Here, as elsewhere 
in the present volume, the creative instinct re- 
veals itself in imagining emotions and not char- 
acters. The artist has supplied the passion of 
the lover. 

" Cold in the earth — and the deep snow piled above thee, 
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave 1 
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, 
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave ? 

" Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover 
Over the mountains, on that northern shore, 
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover 
Thy noble heart forever, evermore ? 

" Cold in the earth — and fifteen wild Decembers, 
From those brown hills, have melted into spring : 
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers 
After such years of change and suffering ! 

" Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee, 
While the world's tide is bearing me along; 
Other desires and other hopes beset me, 

Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong. 

" No later light has lightened up my heaven, 
No second morn has ever shone for me ; 
All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given. 
All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee. 



1 82 EMILY BRONTE. 

" But, when the days of golden dreams had perished, 

And even Despair was powerless to destroy, 

Then did I learn how existence could be cherished, 

Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy. 

" Then did I check the tears of useless passion — 

Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine ; 
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten 

Down to that tomb already more than mine. 

" And, even yet, I dare not let it languish. 

Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain ; 
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish, 
How could I seek the empty world again ? " 

Better still, of a standard excellence, is a little 
poem, which, by some shy ostrich prompting, 
Emily chose to call 

THE OLD STOIC. 

" Riches I hold in light esteem ; 
And Love I laugh to scorn ; 
And lust of fame was but a dream 
That vanished with the morn : 

" And if I pray, the only prayer 
That moves my lips for me 
Is, ' Leave the heart that now I bear, 
And give me liberty ! ' 

** Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 
'Tis all that I implore ; 
In life and death, a chainless soul, 
With courage to endure." 

Throughout the book one recognizes the ca- 
pacity for producing something finer and quite 



WRITING POETRY. 



183 



different from what is here produced ; one rec- 
ognizes so much, but not the author of ' Wuth- 
ering Heights.' Grand impressions of mood and 
landscape reveal a remarkably receptive artistic 
temperament ; splendid and vigorous movement 
of lines shows that the artist is a poet. Then 
we are in a cul-de-sac. ' There is no hint of what 
kind of poet — too reserved to be consistently 
lyric, there is not sufficient evidence of the dra- 
matic faculty to help us on to the true scent. 
All we can say is that we have before us a 
mind capable of very complete and real illusions, 
haunted by imagination, always fantastic, and 
often terrible ; a temperament reserved, fearless, 
and brooding ; a character of great strength and 
ruggedness, extremely tenacious of impressions. 
We must call in Monsieur Taine and his Milieu 
to account for ' Wuthering Heights.' 

This first volume reveals an overpowering 
imagination which has not yet reached its proper 
outlet. It is painful, in reading these early 
poems, to feel how ruthless and horrible that 
strong imagination often was, as yet directed 
on no purposed line. Sometimes, indeed, sweet 
fancies came to Emily, but often they were 
visions of black dungeons, scenes of death, and 
hopeless parting, of madness and agony. 

" So stood I, in Heaven's glorious sun, 
And in the glare of Hell ; 



1 84 EMILY BRONTE. 

My spirit drank a mingled tone, 
Of seraph's song, and demon's moan ; 
What my soul bore, my soul alone 
Within its^f may tell I " 

It is painful, indeed, to think that the sur- 
roundings of this violent imagination, with its 
bias towards the capricious and the terrifying, 
were loneliness, sorrow, enforced companionship 
with degradation ; a life so bitter, for a long 
time, and made so bitter through another's 
fault, that Emily welcomed her fancies, even the 
gloomiest, as a happy outlet from reality. 

" Oh, dreadful is the check — intense the agony — 
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see; 
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again, 
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain." 

Such were the verses that Charlotte dis- 
covered one autumn day of 1845, which sur- 
prised her, with good reason, by their originality 
and music. Emily was not pleased by what in 
her eyes, so jealous of her liberty, must have 
seemed a deliberate interference with her prop- 
erty. " My sister Emily," continues Charlotte, 
" was not a person of demonstrative character, 
nor one on the recesses of whose mind and feel- 
ings even those nearest and dearest to her could 
intrude unlicensed ; it took hours to reconcile 
her to the discovery I had made, and days to 
persuade her that such poems merited publi- 



WRITING POETRY. 



185 



cation. I knew, however, that a mind like hers 
could not be without some latent spark of honor- 
able ambition, and refused to be discouraged in 
my attempts to fan that spark to flame. 

" Meantime, my younger sister quietly pro- 
duced some of her own compositions, intimating 
that since Emily's had given me pleasure, I might 
like to look at some of hers. I could not but be 
a partial judge, yet I thought that these verses, 
too, had a sweet sincere pathos of their own." 

Only a partial judge could find anything much 
to praise in gentle Anne's trivial verses. Had 
the book an index of first lines, what a scathing 
criticism on the contents would it be ! 

" Sweet are thy strains, celestial bard." 

" I'll rest me in this sheltered bower." 

" Oh, I am very weary, though tears no longer flow." 

From such beginnings we too clearly foresee 
the hopeless bathos of the end. Poor child, her 
real, deep sorrows, expressed in such worn-out 
ill-fitting phrases, are as little touching as the 
beauty of a London shop-girl under the ready- 
made cast-off adornments of her second-hand 
finery. 

Charlotte, however, knowing the real sorrow, 
the real meekiless that inspired them, not un- 
naturally put into the trivial verses the pathos 
of the writer's circumstances. Of a truth, her 
own poems are not such as would justify any 



1 86 EMILY BRONTE. 

great rigor of criticism. They are often, as 
poems, actually inferior to Anne's, her manner 
of dragging in a tale or a moral at the end of a 
lyric having quite a comical effect ; yet, on the 
whole, her share of the book clearly distin- 
guishes her as an eloquent and imaginative 
racontcuse, at the same time that it denies her 
the least sprout, the smallest leaf, of that flower- 
less wreath of bays which Emily might claim. 
But at that time the difference was not so 
clearly distinguishable ; though Charlotte ever 
felt and owned her sister's superiority in this 
respect, it was not recognized as of a sort to 
quite outshine her own little tales in verse, and 
quite outlustre Anne's pious effusions. 

A packet of manuscript was selected, a little 
packet written in three different hands and 
signed by three names. The sisters did not 
wish to reveal their identity ; they decided on a 
nom de plume, and chose the common north- 
country surname of Bell. They did not wish to 
be known as women : ** we had a vague impres- 
sion that authoresses are liable to be looked on 
with prejudices;" yet their fastidious honor 
prevented them from wearing a mask they had 
no warrant for ; to satisfy both scruples they 
assumed names that might equally belong to a 
man or a woman. In the part of Yorkshire 
where they lived children are often christened 



WRITING POETRY. 187 

by family names ; over the shops they would see 
" Sunderland Akroyd," varied by " Pighills Sun- 
derland," with scarce a John or James to bear 
them company. So there was nothing strange 
to them in the fashion so ingeniously turned 
to their own uses; Ellis veiled Emily; Currer, 
Charlotte; Acton, Anne. The first and last are 
common names enough — a Miss Currer who 
was one of the subscribers to Cowan's Bridge 
may have suggested her pseudonym to Char- 
lotte. At last every detail was discussed, de- 
cided, and the packet sent off to London to try 
its fortunes in the world : 

"This bringing out of our Httle book was hard 
work. As was to be expected neither we nor 
our poems were at all wanted ; but for this we 
had been prepared at the outset ; though inex- 
perienced ourselves, we had read the experience 
of others. The great puzzle lay in the difficulty 
of getting answers of any kind from the pub- 
lishers to whom we applied. Being greatly 
harassed by this obstacle, I ventured to apply to 
the Messrs. Chambers of Edinburgh for a word 
of advice : they may have forgotten the circum- 
stance, but / have not ; for from them I received 
a brief and business-like but civil and sensible 
reply, on which we acted, and at last made a 
way." ^ 

1 Memoir. C. B. 



1 88 EMILY BRONTE. 

Ultimately the three sisters found a publisher 
who would undertake the work upon commission ; 
a favorable answer came from Messrs. Aylott 
& Jones, of Paternoster Row, who estimated the 
expense of the book at thirty guineas. It was a 
great deal for the three sisters to spare from 
their earnings, but they were eager to print, 
eager to make sacrifices, as though in some dim 
way they saw already the glorious goal. But at 
present there was business to do. They bought 
one of the numerous little primers that are always 
on sale to show the poor vain moth of amateur 
authorship how least to burn his wings — little 
books more eagerly bought and read than any 
of those that they bring into the world. Such a 
publisher's guide, meant for ambitious school- 
boys, the Brontes bought and studied as anx- 
iously as they. By the end of February all was 
settled, the type decided upon, the money de- 
spatched, the printers at work. Emily Bronte s 
copy is dated May 7th, 1846. 

What eagerness at the untying of the parcel 
in which those first copies came ! What disap- 
pointment, chequered with ecstasy, at reading 
their own verse, unaltered, yet in print ! An 
experience not so common then as now ; to be a 
poetess in those days had a certain distinction, 
and the three sisters must have anxiously waited 
for a greeting. The poems had been despatched 



WRITING POETRY. 



189 



to many magazines : Colbinni s, Bejitleys, Hood's, 
Jerrold's, Blackwood's, their early idol ; to the 
EdinbiLvgh Review, Tail's Edinburgh Magazine, 
the Dublin University Magazine ; to the Athe- 
7i(2U7n, the Literary Gazette, the Critic, and to the 
Daily News, the Times, and to the B^dtannia 
newspaper. Surely from some quarter they 
would hear such an authentic word of warning 
or welcome as should confirm at once their 
hopes or their despairs. They had grown used 
to waiting ; but they had long to wait. At last, 
on July 4th, the Athen(2imt reviewed their book 
in a short paragraph, and it is remarkable that, 
though in such reviews of the poems as appeared 
after the publication of ' Jane Eyre,' it is always 
Currer Bell's *' fine . sense of nature," Currer 
Bell's "matured intellect and masterly hand," 
that wins all the praise ; still, in this early no- 
tice, the yet unblinded critic has perceived to 
whom the palm is due. Ellis Bell he places first 
of the three supposed brothers, naming him " a 
fine quaint spirit with an evident power of wing 
that may reach heights not here attempted." 
Next to him the critic ranks Currer, lastly Anne. 
Scarce another notice did they see. 

The little book was evidently a failure ; it had 
fallen still-born from the press. Were all their 
hopes to die as soon as they were born } At 
least they resolved not to be too soon baffled, 



1 90 



EMILY BRONTE. 



and already, in the thick of their disappointment, 
began to lay the plots of the novels they would 
write. Like our army, they gained their battles 
by never owning they were beaten. 

They kept it all to themselves, this disappoint- 
ment, these resolutions. When the inquisitive 
postman asked Mr. Bronte if he knew who was 
that Mr. Currer Bell for whom so many letters 
always came, the old gentleman answered with 
a sense of authority, " My good man, there is no 
such person in the parish ; " and when, on rare 
occasions, Bran well came into the room where 
they were writing, no word was said of the work 
that was going on. Not even to the sisterly 
Ellen, so near to all their hearts, was any con- 
fession made of the way they spent their time. 

" We have done nothing (to speak of) since you 
were here," says conscientious Anne. Never- 
theless their friend drew her conclusions. About 
this time she came to stay at Haworth, and 
sometimes (a little amused at their reticence) 
she would tease them with her suspicions, to 
Charlotte's alarmed surprise. Once, at this time, 
when they were walking on the moor together, 
a sudden change and light came into the sky. 
" Look," said Charlotte ; and the four girls looked 
up and saw three suns shining clearly overhead. 
They stood a Httle while silently gazing at the 
beautiful parhelion ; Charlotte, her friend, and 



WRITING POETRY. 191 

Anne clustered together, Emily a little higher, 
standing on a heathery knoll. ''That is you!" 
said Ellen at last. " You are the three suns." 
" Hush ! " cried Charlotte, indignant at the too 
shrewd nonsense of her friend ; but as Ellen, 
her suspicions confirmed by Charlotte's violence, 
lowered her eyes to the earth again, she looked 
a moment at Emily. She was still standing on 
her knoll, quiet, satisfied ; and round her lips 
there hovered a very soft and happy smile. She 
was not angry, the independent Emily. She had 
liked the httle speech. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



TROUBLES. 



While Emily Bronte was striving to create a 
world of fancy and romance natural to her pas- 
sionate spirit, the real, evcry-day existence in 
which she had to work and endure was becoming 
day by day more anxious and troubled. An 
almost unlivable life it seems, recalling it, stifled 
with the vulgar tragedy of Branwell's woes, the 
sordid cares that his debts entailed, the wearing 
anxiety that watched the oncoming blindness of 
old Mr. Bronte. These months of 1846 during 
which, let us remember, Emily was writing 
' Wuthering Heights,' must have been the heav- 
iest and dreariest of her days ; it was during 
thcii- weary course that she at last perceived how 
utterly hopeless, how insensible to good, must be 
the remaining life of her brother. 

For so long as the future was left him. Bran- 
well never reached the limit of abasement. He 
drank to drown sorrow, to deaden memory and 
the flight of time; he went far, but not too far 
to turn back when the day should dawn which , 



TROUBLES. 



193 



should recall him to prosperity and happiness. 
He was still, though perverted and debased, 
capable of reform, and susceptible to holy influ- 
ences. He had not finally cast away goodness 
and honor; they were but momentarily discarded, 
like rings taken off for heavy work ; by-and-by he 
would put them on again. 

Suddenly the future was taken away. One 
morning, about six months after his dismissal, a 
letter came for Branwell announcing the death 
of his former employer. All he had ever hoped 
for lay at his feet — the good, wronged man was 
dead. His wife, his wealth, should now make 
Branwell glad. A new life, earned by sin and 
hatred, should begin ; a new good life, honorable 
and happy. It was in Branwell's nature to be 
glad when peace and honor came to him, al- 
though he would make no effort to attain them, 
and this morning he was very happy. 

" He fairly danced down the churchyard as if 
he were out of his mind ; he was so fond of that 
woman," says my informant. 

The next morning he rose, dressed himself 
with care, and prepared for a journey, but before 
he had even set out from Haworth two men 
came riding to the village post haste. They 
sent for Branwell, and when he arrived, in a 
great state of excitement, one of the riders dis- 
mounted and went with him into the "Black 

13 



194 



EMILY BRONTE. 



Bull." They went into the brown parlor of the 
inn, the cheerful, wainscoted parlor, where Bran- 
well had so often lorded it over his boon com- 
panions from his great three-cornered chair. 
After some time the messenger rose and left ; 
and those who were in the inn thought they 
heard a strange noise in the parlor — a bleating 
like a calf s. Yet, being busy people, they did 
not go in to see if anything had happened, and 
amid the throng of their employments the sound 
passed out of their ears and out of their memory. 
Hours afterwards the young girl who used to 
help in the housework at the inn, the Anne who 
still remembers Branwell's fluent greetings, found 
occasion to enter the parlor. She went in and 
found him on the floor, looking changed and 
dreadful. He had fallen down in a sort of stu- 
pefied fit. After that day he was an altered 
being. 

The message he had heard had changed the 
current of his life. It was not the summons he 
expected ; but a prayer from the woman he loved 
not to come near her, not to tempt her to ruin ; 
if she saw him once, the care of her children, 
the trust of th^ir fortunes, all was forfeited. She 
entreated him to keep away ; anxious, perhaps, 
in this sudden loneliness of death, to retrieve 
the past, or by some tender superstition made 
less wilUng to betray the dead than the living ; 



TROUBLES. 195 

or, it may be, merely eager to retain at all costs 
the rank, the station, the honors to which she 
was accustomed. Be it as it may, Branwell 
found himself forgotten. 

" Oh, dreadful heart of woman, 
That in one day forgets what man remembers, 
Forgetting him therewith." 

After that day he was different. He de- 
spaired, and drank himself to death, drinking to 
the grave and forgetfulness, gods of his Sabbath, 
and borrowing a transient pleasure at fearful 
interest. But to such a man the one supreme 
temptation is enjoyment: it must be had, though 
life and heaven go forfeit. And while he ca- 
roused, " and by his whole manner gave indica- 
tions of intense enjoyment," ^ his old father grew 
quite blind, Anne day by day more delicate and 
short of breath, ambitious Charlotte pined like 
an eagle in a cage, and Emily, writing * Wuther- 
ing Heights,' called those affected who found 
the story more terrible than life. 

It was she who saw most of her abandoned 
brother, for Anne could only shudder at his sin, 
and Charlotte was too indignant for pity. But 
Emily, the stern, charitable woman, who spared 
herself no pang, who loved to carry tenderly the 
broken-winged nestlings in her hard-working 

1 George Searle Phillips. 



196 EMILY BRONTE. 

hands, Emily was not revolted by his weakness. 
Shall I despise the deer for his timid swiftness 
to fly, or the leveret because it cannot die 
bravely, or mock the death-agony of the wolf be- 
cause the beast is gaunt and foul to see ? she 
asks herself in one of the few personal poems 
she has left us. No ! An emphatic no ; for 
Emily Bronte had a place in her heart for all the 
wild children of nature, and to despise them for 
their natural instincts was impossible to her. 
And thus it came about that she ceased to grow 
indignant at Branwell's follies ; she made up her 
mind to accept with angerless sorrow his natural 
vices. All that was left of her ready disdain 
was an extreme patience which expected no re- 
form, asked no improvement ; the patience she 
had for the leveret and the wolf, things con- 
temptible and full of harm, yet not so by their 
own choice ; the patience of acquiescent and 
hopeless despair. 

Branwell's pity was all for himself. He did 
not spare the pious household forced into the 
contamination of his evil habits. "Nothing hap- 
pens at Havyorth," says Charlotte ; " nothing at 
least of a pleasant kind. One little incident 
occurred about a week ago to sting us into life ; 
but, if it give no more pleasure for you to hear 
than it does for us to witness, you will scarcely 
thank me for adverting to it. It was merely the 



TROUBLES. 



197 



arrival of a sheriff's officer on a visit to Branwell, 
inviting him either to pay his debts or take a 
trip to York. Of course his debts had to be paid. 
It is not agreeable to lose money, time after time, 
in this way ; but where is the use of dwelling on 
such subjects t It will make him no better." ^ 

Reproaches only hardened his heart and made 
him feel himself more than ever abused by cir- 
cumstances and fate. " Sometimes," ^ says Mr. 
Phillips, " he would complain of the way he was 
treated at home, and, as an instance, related the 
following : 

'' One of the Sunday-school girls, in whom he 
and all his house took much interest, fell very 
sick, and they were afraid she would not live. 

" ' I went to see the poor little thing,' he said, 
' sat with her half-an-hour and read a psalm to 
her and a hymn at her request. I felt very much 
like praying with her too,' he added, his voice 
trembling with emotion, * but you see I was not 
good enough. How dare I pray for another, who 
had almost forgotten how to pray for myself } 
I came away with a heavy heart, for I felt sure 
she would die, and went straight home, where I 
fell into melancholy musings. I wanted some- 
body to cheer me. I often do ; but no kind word 
finds its way to my ears, much less to my heart. 

1 Mrs. Gaskell. 

2 ' Branwell Bronte.' G. S. Phillips. 



198 



EMILY BRONTE. 



Charlotte observed my depression, and asked 
what ailed me. So I told her. She looked at. 
me with a look which I shall never forget, if I 
live to be a hundred years old — which I never 
shall. It was not like her at all. It wounded 
me, as if some one had struck me a blow in the 
mouth. It involved ever so many things in it. 
It was a dubious look. It ran over me, ques- 
tioning and examining, as if I had been a wild 
beast. It said, ' Did my ears deceive me, or did 
I hear aught } ' And then came the painful, 
baffled expression which was worse than all. It 
said, ' I wonder if that's true 1 ' But, as she left 
the room, she seemed to accuse herself of having 
wronged me, and smiled kindly upon me and 
said, * She is my little scholar, and I will go and 
see her.* I replied not a word. I was too much 
cut up. When she was gone, I came over here 
to the " Black Bull " and made a night of it in 
sheer disgust and desperation. Why could they 
not give me some credit when I was trying to be 
good .? ' " 

In such wise the summer of 1846 drew on, 
wearily enough, with increased economies in the 
already frugal household, that Branwell's debts 
might honorably be paid, with gathering fears 
for the father, on whom dyspepsia and blindness 
were laying heavy hands. He could no longer 
see to read ; he, the great walker who loved to 



TROUBLES. ig(^ 

ramble alone, could barely grope his way about ; 
all that was left fo him of sight was the ability 
to recognize well-known figures standing in a 
strong light. Yet he still continued to preach ; 
standing gray and sightless in the pulpit, utter- 
ing what words (perforce unstudied) came to his 
lips. Himself in his sorrowful age and stern 
endurance a most noble and comprehensible 
sermon. 

His spirits were much depressed ; for now he 
could no longer forget himself in his lonely stud- 
ies, no longer walk on the free moors alone when 
trouble invaded the narrow house below. He 
lived now of necessity in intimate relation with 
his children ; he depended on them. And now 
he made acquaintance with the heroic nature of 
his daughters, and saw the petty drudgery of 
their lives, and how worthily they turned it to a 
grace in the wearing of it. And now he saw 
clearly the vain, dependent, passionate tempera- 
ment of his son, and knew how, by the lack of 
training, the plant had been ruined and draggled 
in the mire, which might have beautifully flowered 
and borne good fruit had it been staked and sup- 
ported ; the poor espalier thing that could not 
stand alone. Nemesis had visited his home. 
He felt the consequences of his selfishness, his 
arrogance, his cold isolation, and bitterly, bit- 
terly he mourned. 



200 EMILY BRONTE. 

The cataract grew month by month, a thick- 
ening veil that blotted out the world ; and month 
by month the old blind man sat wearily thinking 
through the day of his dear son's ruin, for he had 
ever loved Branwell the best, and lay at night 
listening for his footsteps ; while below, alone, 
his daughter watched as wearily for the prodi- 
gal's return. 

The three girls looked on and longed to help. 
All that they could do they did, Charlotte being 
her father's constant helper and companion ; but 
all they could do was little. They would not 
reconcile themselves to see him sink into blind- 
ness. They busied themselves in collecting what 
information they could glean concerning opera- 
tions upon cataract, and the names of oculists. 
But at present there was nothing to do but wait 
and endure; for even they, with their limited 
knowledge, could tell that their father's eyes were 
not ready yet for the surgeon's knife. 

Meanwhile they worked in secret at their 
novels. So soon as the poems ha4 been sent 
off, and even when it was evident that that ven- 
ture, too, had failed, the sisters determined to 
try and earn a livelihood by writing. They could 
no longer leave their home, their father being 
helpless and Branwell worse than helpless ; yet, 
with ever-increasing expenses and no earnings, 
bare living was difficult to compass. The future, 



TROUBLES. 20I 

too, was uncertain ; should their father's case 
prove hopeless, should he become quite blind, ill, 
incapable of work, they would be homeless in- 
deed. With such gloomy boding in their hearts, 
with such stern impelling necessity bidding them 
strive and ever strive again, as a baffled swimmer 
strives for land, these three sisters began their 
work. Two of them, in after time, were to be 
known through all the world, were to be influ- 
ences for all time to come, and, a new glory in 
the world not known before their days, were to 
make up ^* with Mrs. Browning the perfect trinity 
of English female fame." ^ But with little thought 
of this, heavily and very wearily, they set out 
upon their undertaking. 

Every evening when the sewing was put away 
the writing was begun, the three sisters, sitting 
round the table, or more often marching round 
and round the room as in their schoolgirl days, 
would hold solemn council over the progress of 
their work. The division of chapters, the naming 
of characters, the progress of events, was then 
decided, so that each lent a hand to the other's 
work. Then, such deliberations done, the paper 
would be drawn out, and the casual notes of the 
day corrected and writ fair ; and for an hour or 
more there would be no sound save the scratch- 
ing of pens on the paper and the gusty wailing 
of the wind outside. 

1 A. C. Swinburne. * Note on Charlotte Bronte.' 



202 EMILY BRONTE. 

Such methodical work makes rapid progress. 
In a few months each sister had a novel com- 
pleted. Charlotte, a grave and quiet study of 
Belgian life and character, * The Professor ; * 
Anne, a painstaking account of a governess's 
trials, which she entitled 'Agnes Grey.' Emily's 
story was very different, and less perceptibly in- 
terwoven with her own experience. We all know 
at least the name of 'Wuthering Heights.* 

The novels were sent off, and at first seemed 
even less likely of success than the school had 
been, or the book of verses. Publisher after pub- 
lisher rejected them ; then, thinking that perhaps 
it was not cunning to send the three novels in a 
batch, since the ill-success of one might prejudice 
all, the sisters sent them separately to try their 
chance. But ever with the same result — month 
after month, came rejection. 

At home affairs continued no less dishearten- 
ing, Branwell often laid up with violent fits of 
sickness, Mr. Bronte becoming more utterly 
blind. At last, in the end of July, Emily and 
Charlotte set out for Manchester to consult an 
oculist. There they heard of Mr. Wilson as the 
best, and to him they went ; but only to find that 
no decisive opinion could be given until their 
father's eyes had been examined. Yet, not dis- 
heartened, they went back to Haworth ; for at 
least they had discovered a physician and had 



TROUBLES. 



203 



made sure that, even at their father's advanced 
age, an operation might prove successful. There- 
fore, at the end of August, Charlotte, who was 
her father's chief companion and the most easily 
spared from home, took old Mr. Bronte to Man- 
chester. Mr. Wilson pronounced his eyes ready 
for the operation, and the old man and his 
daughter went into lodgings for a month. " I 
wonder how Emily and Anne will get on at home 
with Branwell," says Charlotte, accustomed to 
be the guide and leader of that little household. 

Hardly enough, no doubt ; for Anne was little 
fitted now to struggle against fate. She never 
had completely rallied from the prolonged misery 
of her sojourn with Branwell in that fatal house 
which was to blight their future and be blighted by 
them. She grew weaker and weaker, that "gentle 
little one," so tender, so ill fitted to her rugged 
and gloomy path of life. Emily looked on with 
a breaking heart ; trouble encompassed her on 
every side ; her father blind in Manchester ; her 
brother drinking himself to death at home ; her 
sister failing, paling day by day ; and every now 
and then a letter would come announcing that 
such and such a firm of publishers had no use 
for 'Agnes Grey' and 'Wuthering Heights.' 

Charlotte in Manchester fared little better. 
*The Professor' had been returned to heron the 
very day of her father's operation, when (bearing 



204 EMILY BRONTE, 

this unspoken-of blow as best she might) she 
had to stay in the room while the cataract was 
removed from his eyes. Exercise makes courage 
strong ; that evening, when her father in his 
darkened room might no longer speak or be 
spoken to, that very evening she began 'Jane 
Eyre/ 

This was being braver than brave Emily, who 
has left us nothing, save a few verses, written 
later than ' Wuthering Heights.' But at Haworth 
there was labor and to spare for every instant 
of the busy days, and Charlotte, in Manchester, 
found her unaccustomed leisure and unoccupied 
confinement very dreary. 

Towards the end of September Mr. Bronte 
was pronounced on a fair way to recovery, and 
he and Charlotte set out for Haworth. It was 
a happy home-coming, for things had prospered 
better than Charlotte had dared to hope during 
the latter weeks of her absence. Every day the 
old man grew stronger, and little by little his 
sight came back. He could see the glorious 
purple of the moors, Emily's moors, no less 
beloved in her sorrowing womanhood than in 
her happy hoyden time of youth. He could see 
his children's faces, and the miserable change 
in Branwell's features. He began to be able 
to read a little, a very little at a time, and by 
November was sufficiently recovered to take the 



TROUBLES. 205 

whole duty of the three Sunday services upon 
himself. 

Not long after this time, three members of 
that quiet household were still further cheered 
by learning that * Agnes Gray ' and * Wuthering 
Heights ' had found acceptance at the hands of 
a publisher. Acceptance ; but upon impover- 
ishing terms. Still, for so much they were 
thankful. To write, and bury unread the things 
one has written, is playing music upon a dumb 
piano. Who plays, would fain be heard. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

' WUTHERING HEIGHTS : ' ITS ORIGIN. 

A GRAY old Parsonage standing among graves, 
remote from the world on its wind-beaten hill- 
top, all round the neighboring summits wild 
' with moors; a lonely place among half-dead 
ash-trees and stunted thorns, the world cut off 
on one side by the still ranks of the serried 
dead, and distanced on the other by mile-long 
stretches of heath : such, we know, was Emily 
Bronte's home. 

An old, blind, disillusioned father, once prone 
to an extraordinary violence of temper, but now 
grown quiet with age, showing his disappoint- 
ment with life by a melancholy cynicism that 
was quite sincere; two sisters, both beloved, 
one, fired with genius and quick to sentiment, 
hiding her enthusiasm under the cold demeanor 
of the ex-governess, unsuccessful, and unrecog- 
nized ; the other gentler, dearer, fairer, slowly 
dying, inch by inch, of the blighting neighbor- 
hood of vice ; one brother, scarce less dear, of 
set purpose drinking himself to death out of 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 



207 



furious thwarted passion for a mistress that he 
mi_ght not marry : these were the members of 
Emily Bronte s household. 

Herself we know: inexperienced, courageous, 
passionate, and full of pity. Was it wonderful 
that she summed up life in one bitter line? — 

"Conquered good and conquering ill." 

Her own circumstances proved the axiom 
true, and of other lives she had but little knowl- 
edge. Whom should she ask } The gentle 
Ellen who seemed of another world, and yet had 
plentiful troubles of her own t The curates she 
despised for their narrow priggishness ? The 
people in the village of whom she knew nothing 
save when sickness, wrong, or death summoned 
her to their homes to give help and protection } 
Her life had given only one view of the world, 
and she could not realize that there were others 
which she had not seen. 

" I am bound to avow," says Charlotte, " that 
she had scarcely more practical knowledge of 
the peasantry among whom she lived than a nun 
has of the country people that pass her convent 
gates. My sister's disposition was not naturally 
gregarious ; circumstances favored and fostered 
her tendency to seclusion ; except to go to 
church, or to take a walk on the hills, she rarely 
crossed the threshold of home. Though her 



208 EMILY BRONTE. 

feeling for the people round her was benevolent, 
intercourse with them she never sought, nor, 
with very few exceptions, ever experienced; and 
yet she knew them, knew their ways, their lan- 
guage, their family histories ; she could hear of 
them with interest and talk of them with detail, 
minute, graphic, and accurate ; but with them 
she rarely exchanged a word. Hence it ensued 
that what her mind had gathered of the real 
concerning them was too exclusively confined 
to those tragic and terrible traits of which, in 
listening to the secret annals of every rude 
vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to 
receive the impress. Her imagination, which 
was a spirit more sombre than sunny, more pow- 
erful than sportive, found in such traits materials 
whence it wrought creations like Heathcliff, like 
Earnshaw, like Catharine. Having formed these 
beings, she did not know what she had done. If 
the auditors of her work, when read in manu- 
script, shuddered under the grinding influence of 
natures so relentless and implacable — of spirits 
so lost and fallen ; if it was complained that the 
mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes 
banished sleep by night and disturbed mental 
peace by day, Ellis Bell would wonder what was 
meant and suspect the complainant of affecta- 
tion. Had she but lived, her mind would of 
itself have grown like a strong tree — loftier and 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 



209 



straighter, wider spreading — and its matured 
fruits wbuld have attained a mellower ripening 
and sunnier bloom ; but on that mind time and 
experience alone could work, to the influence 
of other intellects it was not amenable." "^ 

Yet no human being is wholly free, none 
wholly independent, of surroundings. And 
Emily Bronte least of all could claim such im- 
munity. We can with difficulty just imagine 
her a prosperous heiress, loving and loved, high- 
spirited and even hoydenish ; but with her cava- 
lier fantasy informed by a gracious splendor 
all her own, we can just imagine Emily Bronte 
as Shirley Keeldar, but scarcely Shirley Keeldar 
writing 'Wuthering Heights.* Emily Bronte 
away from her moors, her loneliness, her poverty, 
her discipline, her companionship with genius, 
violence, and degradation, would have taken 
another color, as hydrangeas grow now red, now 
blue, according to the nature of the soil. It was 
not her lack of knowledge of the world that made 
the novel she wrote become * Wuthering Heights,' 
not her inexperience, but rather her experience, 
limited and perverse, indeed, and specialized by 
a most singular temperament, yet close and very 
real. Her imagination was as much inspired 
by the circumstances of her life, as was Anne's 
when she wrote the 'Tenant of Wildfell Hall,' 

1 'Memoir.' Charlotte Bronte. 
14 



210 EMILY BRONTE. 

or Charlotte's in her masterpiece 'Villette'; 
but, as in each case the imagination was of a 
different quahty, experience, acting upon it, pro- 
duced a distinct and dissimilar result ; a result 
obtained no less by the contrariety than by the 
harmony of circumstance. For our surround- 
ings affect us in two ways ; subtly and perma- 
nently, tingeing us through and through as wine 
tinges water, or, by some violent neighborhood 
of antipathetic force, sending us off at a tangent 
as far as possible from the antagonistic presence 
that so detestably environs us. The fact that 
Charlotte Bronte knew chiefly clergymen is 
largely responsible for ' Shirley,' that satirical 
eulogy of the Church and apotheosis of Sunday- 
school teachers. But Emily, living in this same 
clerical evangelistic atmosphere, is revolted, 
forced to the other extreme ; and, while shelter- 
ing her true opinions f-rom herself under the 
all-embracing term " Broad Churth," we find in 
her writings no belief so strong as the belief 
in the present use and glory of life ; no love so 
great as her love for earth — earth the mother 
and grave ; no assertion of immortality, but a 
deep certainty of rest. There is no note so 
often 'struck in all her work, and struck with 
such variety of emphasis, as this : that good for 
goodness' sake is desirable, evil for evil's sake 
detestable, and that for the just and the unjust 
alike there is rest in the grave. 



' WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 211 

This quiet clergyman's daughter, always hear- 
ing evil of Dissenters, has therefore from pure 
courage and revolted justice become a dissenter 
herself. A dissenter in more ways than one. 
Never was a nature more sensitive to the stu- 
pidities and narrowness of conventional opinion, 
a nature more likely to be found in the ranks of 
the opposition ; and with such a nature indigna- 
tion is the force that most often looses the gate 
of speech. The impulse to reveal wrongs and 
sufferings as they really are is overwhelmingly 
strong ; although the revelation itself be imper- 
fect. What, then, would this inexperienced York- 
shire parson's daughter reveal .'* The unlikeness 
of life to the authorized pictures of life ; the force 
of evil, only conquerable by the slow-revolving 
process of nature which admits not the eternal 
duration of the perverse ; the grim and fearful 
lessons of heredity ; the sufficiency of the finite 
to the finite, of life to life, with no other re- 
vi^ard than the conduct of life fulfils to him 
that lives ; the all-penetrating kinship of living 
things, heather-sprig, singing lark, confident 
child, relentless tyrant ; and, not least, not least 
to her already in its shadow, the sure and uni- 
versal peace of death. 

A strange evangel from such a preacher ; but 
a faith evermore emphasized and deeper rooted 
in Emily's mind by her incapacity to acquiesce in 



212 EMILY BRONTE, 

the stiff, pragmatic teaching, the narrow preju- 
dice, of the Calvinists of Haworth. Yet this very 
Calvinism influenced her ideas, this doctrine she 
so passionately rejected, calling herself a disciple 
of the tolerant and thoughtful Frederick Maurice, 
and writing, in defiance of its flames and shriek- 
ings, the most soothing consolations to mortality 
that I remember in our tongue. 

Nevertheless, so dual-naturcd is the force of 
environment, this antagonistic faith, repelling her 
to the extreme rebound of belief, did not send her 
out from it before she had assimilated some of 
its sternest tenets. From this doctrine of re- 
ward and punishment she learned that for every 
unchecked evil tendency there is a fearful expia- 
tion ; though she placed it. not indeed in the 
flames of hell, but in the perverted instincts of 
our own children. Terrible theories of doomed 
incurable sin and predestined loss warned her 
that an evil stock will only beget contamination : 
the children of the mad must be liable to mad- 
ness ; the children of the depraved, bent towards 
depravity ; the seed of the poison-plant springs 
up to blast and ruin, only to be overcome by 
uprooting and sterilization, or by the judicious 
grafting, the patient training of many years. 

Thus prejudiced and evangelical Haworth had 
prepared the woman who rejected its Hebraic 
dogma, to find out for herself the underlying 



'WUTHERiNG heights: 213 

truths. She accepted them in their full signifi- 
cance. It has been laid as a blame to her that 
she nowhere shows any proper abhorrence of the 
fiendish and vindictive Ueathcliff. She who re- 
veals him remembers the dubious parentage of 
that forsaken seaport baby, " Lascar or Gipsy ;" 
she remembers the Ishmaelitish childhood, too 
much loved and hated, of the little interloper 
whose hand was against every man's hand. Re- 
membering this, she submits as patiently to 
his swarthy soul and savage instincts as to his 
swarthy skin and " gibberish that nobody could 
understand." From thistles you gather no grapes. 
No use, she seems to be saying, in waiting for 
the children of evil parents to grow, of their own 
will and unassisted, straight and noble. The very 
quality of their will is as inherited as their eyes 
and hair. Ueathcliff is no fiend or goblin ; the 
untrained doomed child of some half-savage 
sailor's holiday, violent and treacherous. And 
how far shall we hold the sinner responsible for 
a nature which is itself the punishment of some 
forefather's crime } Even for such there must be 
rest. No possibility in the just and reverent 
mind of Emily Bronte that the God whom she 
believed to be the very fount and soul of life 
could condemn to everlasting fire the victims of 
morbid tendencies not chosen by themselves. 
No purgatory, and no everlasting flame, is 



214 EMILY BRONTE. 

needed to purify the sins of Heathcliff; his 
grave on the hillside will grow as green as any 
other spot of grass, moor-sheep will find the 
grass as sweet, heath and harebells will grow 
of the same color on it as over a baby's grave. 
For life and sin and punishment end with death 
to the dying man ; he slips his burden then on 
to other shoulders, and no visions mar his rest. 

•' I wondered how any one could ever imagine 
unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet 
earth." So ends the last page of ' Wuthering 
Heights.' 

So much for the theories of life and evil that 
the clash of circumstance and character struck 
out from Emily Bronte. It happened, as we 
know, that she had occasion to test these theo- 
ries ; and but for that she could never have writ- 
ten * Wuthering Heights.' " Not that the story, 
the conception, would have failed. After all 
there is nothing more appalling in the violent 
history of that upland farm than many a mid- 
land manor set thick in elms, many a wild 
country-house of Wales or Cornwall, could un- 
fold. Stories more socially painful than the 
mere brute violence of the Earnshaws ; of mad- 
ness and treachery, stories of girls entrapped un- 
willingly into a lunatic marriage that the estate 
might have an heir ; legends of fearful violence, 
of outcast children, dishonored wives, horrible 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS. 



215 



and persistent evil. Who, in the secret places of 
his memory, stores not up such haunting gossip ? 
And Emily, familiar with all the wild stories of 
Haworth for a century back, and nursed on 
grisly Irish horrors, tales of 1798, tales of op- 
pression and misery, Emily, with all this eerie 
lore at her finger-ends, would have the less diffi- 
culty in combining and working the separate 
motives into a consistent whole, that she did not 
know the real people whose histories she knew 
by heart. No memory of individual manner, 
dominance or preference for an individual type, 
caught and disarranged her theories, her concep- 
tion being the completer from her ignorance. 
This much her strong reason and her creative 
power enabled her to effect. But this is not all. 
This is the plot ; but to make a character 
speak, act, rave, love, live, die, through a whole 
lifetime of events, even as the readers feel con- 
vinced he must have acted, must have lived and 
died, this demands at least so much experience 
of a somewhat similar nature as may serve for a 
base to one's imagination, a reserve of certainty 
and reassurance on which to draw in times of 
perplexity and doubt. Branwell, who sat to 
Anne sorrily enough for the portrait of Henry 
Huntingdon, served his sister Emily, not indeed 
as a model, a thing to copy, but as a chart of 
proportions by which to measure, and to which 



2i6 EMILY BRONTE. 

to refer, for correct investiture, the inspired idea. 
Mr. Wemyss Reid (whose great knowledge of 
the Bronte history and still greater kindness in 
admitting me to his advantages as much as 
might be, I cannot sufficiently acknowledge) — 
this capable critic perceives a bond fide resem- 
blance between the character of Heathcliff and 
the character of Branwell Bronte as he appeared 
to his sister Emily. So much, bearing in mind 
the verse concerning the leveret, I own I cannot 
see. Branwell seems to me more nearly akin to 
Heathcliff's miserable son than to Heathcliff. 
But that, in depicting Heathcliff's outrageous 
thwarted love for Catharine, Emily did draw 
upon her experience of her brother's suffering, 
this extract from an unpublished lecture of Mr. 
Reid's will sufficiently reveal : ^ 

"It was in the enforced companionship of this 
lost and degraded man that Emily received, I am 
sure, many of the impressions which were subse- 
quently conveyed to the pages of her book. Has 
it not been said over and over again by critics of 
every kind that * Wuthering Heights ' reads like 
the dream of an opium-eater ? And here we 
find that during the whole time of the writing 
of the book an habitual and avowed opium-eater 
was at Emily's elbow. I said that perhaps the 
most striking part of * Wuthering Heights ' was 

1 • Emily Bronte.' T. Wemyss Reid. 



'WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 217 

that which deals with the relations of Heathcliff 
and Catharine after she had become the wife of 
another. Whole pages of the story are filled 
with the ravings and ragings of the villain 
against the man whose life stands between him 
and the woman he loves. Similar ravings are to 
be found in all the letters of Branwell Bronte 
written at this period of his career ; and we may 
be sure that similar ravings were always on his 
lips as, moody and more than half mad, he wan- 
dered about the rooms of the parsonage at Ha- 
worth. Nay, I have found some striking verbal 
coincidences between Branwell's own language 
and passages in * Wuthering Heights.' In one 
of his own letters there are these words in refer- 
ence to the object of his passion : 'My own life 
without her will be hell. What can the so-called 
love of her wretched sickly husband be to her 
compared with mine } ' Now, turn to ' Wuther- 
mg Heights ' and you will read these words : 
'Two words would comprehend my future — 
death and hell ; existence after losing her would 
be hell. Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment 
that she valued Edgar Linton's attachment more 
than mine. If he loved with all the powers of 
his puny being, he could n't love in eighty years 
as much as I could in a day.' " 

So much share in 'Wuthering Heights' Bran- 
well certainly had. He was a page of the book 



21 8 EMILY BRONTE. 

in which his sister studied ; he served, as to an 
artist's temperament all things unconsciously 
serve, for the rough block of granite out of which 
the work is hewn, and, even while with difficulty 
enduring his vices, Emily undoubtedly learned 
from them those darker secrets of humanity ne- 
cessary to her tragic incantation. They served 
her, those dreaded, passionate outbreaks of her 
brother's, even as the moors she loved, the fancy 
she courted, served her. Strange divinnig wand 
of genius, that conjures gold out of the miriest 
earth of common life ; strange and terrible fac- 
ulty laying up its stores and half-mechanically 
drawing its own profit out of our slightest or 
most miserable experiences, noting the gesture 
with which the mother hears of her son's ruin, 
catching the faint varying shadow that the white 
wind-shaken window-blind sends over the dead 
face by which we watch, drawing its life from 
a thousand deaths, humiliations, losses, with a 
hand in our sharpest joys and bitterest sorrows ; 
this faculty was Emily Bronte's, and drew its 
profit from her brother's shame. 

Here ended Bran well's share in producing 
* Wuthering Heights.' But it is not well to ig- 
nore his claim to its entire authorship ; for in 
the contemptuous silence of those who know 
their falsity, such slanders live and thrive like 
unclean insects under fallen stones. The vain 



'WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 219 

boast of an unprincipled dreamer, half-mad with 
opium, half-drunk with gin, meaning nothing but 
the desire to be admired at any cost, has been 
given too much prominence by those lovers of 
sensation who prefer any startling lie to an old 
truth. Their ranks have been increased by the 
number of those who, ignorant of the true cir- 
cumstances of Emily's life, found it impossible 
that an inexperienced girl could portray so much 
violence and such morbid passion. On the con- 
trary, given these circumstances, none but a 
personally inexperienced girl could have treated 
the subject with the absolute and sexless purity 
which we find in ' Wuthering Heights.' How in- 
fecte, commonplace, and ignominious would Bran- 
well, relying on his own recollections, have made 
the thwarted passion of a violent adventurer for 
a woman whose sickly husband both despise ! 
That purity as of polished steel, as cold and 
harder than ice, that freedom in dealing with 
love and hate, as audacious as an infant's love 
for the bright flame of fire, could only belong to 
one whose intensity of genius was rivalled by 
the narrowness of her experience — an experi- 
ence limited not only by circumstances, but by a 
nature impervious to any fierier sentiment than 
the natural love of home and her own people, be- 
ginning before remembrance and as unconscious 
as breathing. 



220 EMILY BRONTE. 

The critic, having Emily's poems and the few 
remaining verses and letters of Branwell, cannot 
doubt the incapacity of that unnerved and gar- 
rulous prodigal to produce a work of art so sus- 
tained, passionate, and remote. For in no respect 
does the terse, fiery, imaginative style of Emily 
resemble the weak, disconnected, now vulgar, 
now pretty mannerisms of Branwell. There is, 
indeed, scant evidence that the writer of Emily's 
poems could produce * Wuthering Heights ; ' but 
there is, at any rate, the impossibility that her 
work could be void of fire, concentration, and 
wild fancy. As great an impossibility as that 
vulgarity and tawdriness should not obtrude their 
ugly heads here and there from under Branwell's 
finest phrases. And since there is no single vul- 
gar, trite, or Micawber-like effusion throughout 
' Wuthering Heights ; ' and since Heathcliff's 
passion is never once treated in the despicable 
would-be worldly fashion in which Branwell de- 
scribes his own sensations, and since at the time 
that * Wuthering Heights ' was written he was 
manifestly, and by his own confession, too phys- 
ically prostrate for any literary effort, we may 
conclude that Branwell did not write the book. 

On the other side we have not only the literary 
evidence of the similar qualities in * Wuthering 
Heights ' and in the poems of Ellis Bell, but the 
express and reiterated assurance of Charlotte 



' WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 22 1 

Bronte, who never even dreamed, it would seem, 
that it could be supposed her brother wrote the 
book ; the testimony of the pubUshers who 
made their treaty with Ellis Bell ; of the servant 
Martha who saw her mistress writing it ; and — 
most convincing of all to those who have appre- 
ciated the character of Emily Bronte — the im- 
possibility that a spirit so upright and so careless 
of fame should commit a miserable fraud to 
obtain it. 

Indeed, so baseless is this despicable rumor 
that to attack it seems absurd, only sometimes 
it is wise to risk an absurdity. Puny insects, 
left too long unhurt, may turn out dangerous 
enemies irretrievably damaging the fertile vine 
on which they fastened in the security of their 
minuteness. 

To the three favoring circumstances of Emily's 
masterpiece, which ^ye have already mentioned 

— the neighborhood of her home, the character 
of her disposition, the quality of her experience 

— a fourth must be added, inferior in degree, 
and yet not absolutely unimportant. This is her 
acquaintance with German literature, and espe- 
cially with Hoffmann's tales. In Emily Bronte s 
day, Romance and Germany had one signifi- 
cance ; it is true that in London and in prose the 
German influence was dying out, but in distant 
Haworth, and in the writings of such poets as 



222 EMILY BRONTE. 

Emily would read, in Scott, in Southey, most of 
all in Coleridge, witli whose poems her own have 
so distinct an affinity, it is still predominant. Of 
the materialistic influence of Italy, of atheist 
Shelley, Byron with his audacity and realism, 
sensuous Keats, she would have little experience 
in her remote parsonage. And, had she known 
them, they would probably have made no impres- 
sion on a nature only susceptible to^indred influ- 
ences. Thackeray, her sister's hero, might have 
never lived for all the trace of him we find in 
Emily's writings ; never is there any single allu- 
sion in her work to the most eventful period of 
her life, that sight of the lusher fields and taller 
elms of middle England ; that glimpse of hurry- 
ing vast London ; that night on the river, the 
sun slipping behind the masts, doubly large 
through the mist and smoke in which the houses, 
bridges, ships, are all spectrjal and dim. No hint 
of this, nor of the sea, nor of Belgium, with its 
quaint foreign life ; nor yet of that French style 
and method so carefully impressed upon her by 
Monsieur Heger, and which so decidedly moulded 
her elder sister's art. But in the midst of her 
business at Haworth we catch a glimpse of her 
reading her German book at night, as she sits 
on the hearthrug with her arm round Keeper's 
neck ; glancing at it in the kitchen, where she is 
making bread, with the volume of her choice 



* WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 



223 



propped up before her ; and by the style of the 
novel jotted down in the rough, almost simulta-. 
neously with her reading, we know that to her 
the study of German was not — like French and 
music — the mere necessary acquirement of a 
governess, but an influence that entered her 
mind and helped to shape the fashion of her 
thoughts. 

So much preface is necessary to explain, not 
the genius of Emily Bronte, but the conditions 
of that genius — there is no use saying more. 
The aim of my writing has been missed if the 
circumstances of her career are not present in 
the mind of my reader. It is too late at this 
point to do more than enumerate them, and 
briefly point to their significance. Such criticism, 
in face of the living work, is all too much like 
glancing in a green and beautiful country at a 
map, from which one may, indeed, ascertain the 
roads that lead to it and away, and the size of 
the place in relation to surrounding districts, but 
which can give no recognizable likeness of the 
scene which lies all round us, with its fresh life 
forgotten and its beauty disregarded. Therefore 
let us make an end of theory and turn to the 
book on which our heroine's fame is stationed, 
fronting eternity. It may be that in unravelling 
its story and noticing the manner in which its 
facts of character and circumstance impressed 



224 EMILY BRONTE. 

her mind, we may, for a moment, be admitted to 
a more thorough and clearer insight into its 
working than we could earn by the completest 
study of external evidence, the most earnest and 
sympathizing criticism. 



CHAPTER XV. 

* WUTHERING HEIGHTS : ' THE STORY. 

On the summit of Haworth Hill, beyond the 
street, stands a gray stone house, which is shown 
as the original of * Wuthering Heights.' A few 
scant and wind-baffled ash-trees grow in front, 
the moors rise at the back stretching away for 
miles. It is a house of some pretensions, once 
the parsonage of Grimshaw, that powerful Wes- 
leyan preacher who, whip in hand, used to visit 
the " Black Bull " on Sunday morning and lash 
the merrymakers into chapel to listen to his ser- 
mon. Somewhat fallen from its former preten- 
sions, it is a farmhouse now, with much such 
an oak-lined and stone-floored house-place as is 
described in * Wuthering Heights.' Over the 
door there is, moreover, a piece of carving : H. E. 
1659, a close enough resemblance to " Hare- 
ton Earnshaw, 1500" — but the "wilderness of 
crumbling griffins and shameless little boys" 
are nowhere to be found. Neither do we notice 
" the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the 
end of the house and a range of gaunt thorns all 

15 



226 EMU y nhWYTE, 

stroti^^hini;- thoir limbs one \\m\- as iforaviui;- alms 
of the sun," and, to my ihinkin^", this line oKl 
farm of Sowdons is far too near tho mills of 
llaworth {o roprcscMU tho (unl torsakon, lonely 
hoiiso A hanilv's ianov. llavini;' soon tho plaoo, 
as in duty bound, ono roturns moro than over 
impressod by tho iaot that whilo owmt individual 
and every site in Idiai lotto's novels oan bo 
eleaiiv identified. Mmib's imaL;ination and her 
power ot drawing;' eonolusions are alone rospt^i- 
siblo tor the eharaeter ol her eroations. This 
is not sayini;- that she had wo ilata to go upon 
Had she not seen Sowilens. and many more sueh 
houses, she would never ha\e invented 'Wuthor- 
ing Heights;' the story and passion oi Hranwell 
sot on her fanev to imagine tho somewhat simi- 
lar story and passion ot lleathelilf. Init in tho 
proeoss ol her work, the nature of her eroations 
eomplotely overmastered tho faets anil memories 
whieh had indueed her to begin. These wore 
but the handful oi dust whieh she took to make 
her man ; and the qualities and defects of her 
masterpicoc are both largely aoeounted for when 
we remember that her oreation oi eharaeter was 
quite unmodifiotl by any attempt at juMtraiture. 

Therefore in * Wuthering Heights' it is with 
a story, a lanoN- picture, that wo ha\o to ileal ; in 
drawing and proportion not unnatural, but eer- 
tainly not painted after nature. To quote her 
sister's beautiful eomnionts — 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS.' 



227 



"' Wuthering Heights' was hewn in a wild 
workshop, with simple tools, out of homely mate- 
rials. The statuary found a granite block on a 
solitary moor ; gazing thereon he saw how from 
the crag might be elicited a head, savage, swart, 
sinister ; a form moulded with at least one ele- 
ment of grandeur — power. H^e wrought with a 
rude chisel, and from no model but the vision of 
his meditations. With time and labor the crag 
took human shape ; and there it stands colossal, 
dark and frowning, half-statue, half-rock ; in the 
former sense, terrible and goblin-like ; in the 
latter, almost beautiful, for its coloring is of 
mellow gray, and moorland moss clothes it ; 
and heath, with its blooming bells and balmy 
fragrance, grows faithfully close to the giant's 
foot." 

Of the rude chisel we find plentiful traces in 
the first few chapters of the book. The man- 
agement of the narrative is singularly clumsy, 
introduced by a Mr. Lockwood — a stranger to 
the North, an imaginary misanthropist, who has 
taken a grange on the moor to be out of the way 
of the world — and afterwards continued to him 
by his housekeeper to amuse the long leisures of 
a winter illness. But, passing over this initial 
awkwardness of conccptioh, we find a manner 
equal to the matter and somewhat resent Char- 
lotte's eloquent comparison ; for there are touches, 



228 EMILY BRONTE. 

fine and delicate, that only a practised hand may- 
dare to give, and there is feeling in the book, not 
only " terrible and goblin-like," but patient and 
constant, sprightly and tender, consuming and 
passionate. We find, getting over the inexperi- 
enced beginning, that the style of the work is 
noble and acconiplished, and that — far from 
being a half-hewn and casual fancy, a head sur- 
mounting a trunk of stone — its plan is thought 
out with scientific exactness, no line blurred, no 
clue forgotten, the work of an intense and poetic 
temperament whose vision is too vivid to be 
incongruous. 

The first four chapters of 'Wuthering Heights' 
are merely introductory. They relate Mr. Lock- 
wood's visit there, his surprise at the rudeness 
of the place in contrast with the foreign air and 
look of breeding that distinguished Mr. Heath- 
cliff and his beautiful daughter-in-law. He also 
noticed the profound moroseness and ill-temper 
of everybody in the house. Overtaken by a 
snow-storm, he was, however, constrained to sleep 
there, and was conducted by the housekeeper 
to an old chamber, long unused, where (since at 
first he could not sleep) he amused himself by 
looking over a few mildewed books piled on one 
corner of the window-ledge. They and the ledge 
were scrawled all over with writing, Catharine 
EarnshaWy sometimes varied to Catharine Heath- 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS? 



229 



clijf, and again to Catharine Linton. Nothing 
save these three names was written on the ledge, 
but the books were covered in every fly-leaf and 
margin with a pen-and-ink commentary, a sort of 
diary, as it proved, scrawled in a childish hand. 
Mr. Lockwood spent the first portion of the 
night in deciphering this faded record ; a string 
of childish mishaps and deficiencies dated a quar- 
ter of a century ago. Evidently this Catharine 
Earnshaw must have been one of Heathcliff' s 
kin, for he figured in the narrative as her fellow- 
scapegrace, and the favorite scapegoat of her 
elder brother's wrath. After some time Mr. 
Lockwood fell asleep, to be troubled by harass- 
ing dreams, in one of which he fancied that 
this childish Catharine Earnshaw, or rather her 
spirit, was knocking and scratching at the fir- 
scraped window-pane, begging to be let in. Over- 
come with the intense horror of nightmare, he 
screamed aloud in his sleep. Waking suddenly 
up he found to his confusion that his yell had 
been heard^ for Heathcliff appeared, exceedingly 
angry that any one had been allowed to sleep in 
the oak-closeted room. 

" ' If the little fiend had got in at the window 
she probably would have strangled me,' I re- 
turned. . . . ' Catharine Linton or Earnshaw, 
or however she was called — she must have been 
a changeling, wicked little soul! She told me 



230 



EMILY BRONTE. 



she had been walking the earth these twenty 
years; a just punishment for her mortal trans- 
gressions, I've no doubt.' 

" Scarcely were these words uttered when I 
recollected the association of Heathcliff's with 
Catharine's name in the books. ... I blushed at 
my inconsideration — but, without showing fur- 
ther consciousness of the offence, I hastened to 
add, ' The truth is, sir, I passed the first part 
of the night in — ' Here I stopped afresh — I 
was about to say ' perusing those old volumes,* 
then it would have revealed my knowledge of 
their written as well as their printed contents ; 
so I went on, * in spelling over the name scratched 
on that window-ledge : a monotonous occupation 
calculated to set me asleep, like counting, or — ' 
* What can you mean by talking in this way to 
me!' thundered Heathcliff with savage vehe- 
mence. * How — how dare you, under my roof.? 
God ! he's mad to speak so ! ' And he struck 
his forehead with rage. 

" I did not know whether to resent this lan- 
guage or pursue my explanation ; but he seemed 
so powerfully affected that I took pity and pro- 
ceeded with my dreams. . . . Heathcliff grad- 
ually fell back into the shelter of the bed, as I 
spoke; finally sitting down almost concealed 
behind it. I guessed, however, by his irregular 
and intercepted breathing, that he struggled to 



'WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 23 1 

vanquish an excess of violent emotion. Not lik- 
ing to show him that I had heard the conflict, 
I continued my toilette rather noisily . . . and 
soliloquized on the length of the night. ' Not 
three o'clock yet ! I could have taken oath it 
had been six. Time stagnates here : we must 
surely have retired to rest at eight ! ' . 

"'Always at nine in winter, and rise at four/ 
said my host, suppressing a groan ; and, as I 
fancied, by the motion of his arm's shadow, dash- 
ing a tear from his eyes. ' Mr. Lockwood,' he 
added, *you may go into my room : you'll only 
be in the way, coming down-stairs so early. . . . 
Take the candle and go where you please. I 
shall join you directly. Keep out of the yard, 
though, the dogs are unchained ; and the house 
— Juno mounts sentinel there, and — nay, you 
can only ramble about the steps and passages. 
But, away with you ! I'll come in two minutes.' 

" I obeyed, so far as to quit the chamber ; 
when, ignorant where the narrow lobbies led, I 
stood still, and was witness, involuntarily, to a 
piece of superstition on the part of my landlord 
which belied oddly his apparent sense. He got 
on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice, 
bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrol- 
lable passion of tears. ' Come in ! come in ! ' he 
sobbed, 'Cathy, do come! Oh, my heart's dar- 
ling! hear me this time, Catharine, at last!' 



232 



EMILY BRONTE. 



The spectre showed a spectre's ordinary caprice: 
it gave no sign of being ; but the snow and 
wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my 
station, and blowing out the Hght. 

"There was such anguish in the gush of grief 
that accompanied this raving, that my compas- 
sion made me overlook its folly, and I drew off, 
half angry to have listened at all, and vexed at 
having related my ridiculous nightmare, since it 
produced that agony ; though ivhy was beyond 
my comprehension." 

Mr. Lockwood got no clue to the mystery at 
' Wuthering Heights ; ' and later on returned to 
Thrushcross Grange, to fall ill of a lingering 
fever. During his recovery he heard the his- 
tory of his landlord, from his housekeeper, who 
had been formerly an occupant of ' Wuthering 
Heights,' and after that, for many years, the 
chief retainer at Thrushcross Grange, where 
young Mrs. Heathcliff used to live when she 
still was Catharine Linton. 

"Do you know anything of Mr. Heathcliff's 
story } " said Mr. Lockwood to his housekeeper, 
Nelly Dean. 

"It's a cuckoo's, sir," she answered. 

It is at this point that the history of 'Wuther- 
ing Heights' commences, that violent and bitter 
history of the " little dark thing harbored by a 
good man to his bane," carried over the thresh- 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 



233 



old, as Christabel lifted Geraldine, out of pity for 
the weakness which, having grown strong, shall 
crush the hand that helped it ; carried over the 
threshold, as evil spirits are carried, powerless to 
enter of themselves, and yet no evil demon, only a 
human soul lost and blackened by tyranny, injus- 
tice, and congenital ruin. The story of ' Wuther- 
ing Heights ' is the story of Heathcliff. It begins 
with the sudden journey of the old squire, Mr. 
Earnshaw, to Liverpool one summer morning at 
the beginning of harvest. He had asked the 
children each to choose a present, ''only let it be 
little, for I shall walk there and back, sixty miles 
each way : " and the son Hindley, a proud, high- 
spirited lad of fourteen, had chosen a fiddle; 
six-year-old Cathy, a whip, for she could ride 
any horse in the stable ; and Nelly Dean, their 
humble playfellow and runner of errands, had 
.been promised a pocketful of apples and pears. 
It was the third night since Mr. Earnshaw's 
departure, and the children, sleepy and tired, 
had begged their mother to let them sit up a 
little longer — yet a little longer — to welcome 
their father, and see their new presents. At 
last — just about eleven o'clock — Mr. Earnshaw 
came back, laughing and groaning over his fa- 
tigue ; and opening his greatcoat, which he held 
bundled up in his arms, he cried : 

" ' See here, wife ! I was never so beaten with 



234 EMILY BRONTE. 

anything in my life : but you must e'en take it 
as a gift of God ; though it's as dark almost as 
if it came from the devil.' 

" We crowded round, and over Miss Cathy's 
head I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired 
child ; big enough both to walk and talk ; in- 
deed, its face looked older than Catharine's ; yet, 
when it was set on its feet, it only stared round 
and repeated over and over again some gibberish 
that nobody could understand. I was frightened, 
and Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out 
of doors : she did fly up, asking how he could 
fashion to bring that gypsy brat into the house 
when they had their own bairns to feed and fend 
for } What he meant to do with it, and whether 
he were mad ? The master tried to explain the 
matter ; but he was really half dead with fatigue, 
and all that I could make out, amongst her 
scolding, was a tale of his seeing it starving and 
houseless, and as good as dumb, in the streets 
of Liverpool, where he picked it up and inquired 
for its owner. Not a soul knew to whom it be- 
longed, he said ; and his money and time being 
both Hmited, he thought it better to take it home 
with him at once, than run into vain expenses 
there ; because he was determined he would not 
leave it as he found it." 

So the child entered 'Wuthering Heights,' a 
cause of dissension from the first. Mrs. Earn- 



* WUTHERING HEIGHTS? 235 

shaw grumbled herself calm ; the children went 
to bed crying, for the fiddle had been broken 
and the whip lost in carrying the little stranger 
for so many miles. But Mr. Earnshaw was 
determined to have his protege respected ; he 
cuffed saucy little Cathy for making faces at the 
new-comer, and turned Nelly Dean out of the 
house for having set him to sleep on the stairs 
because the children would not have him in 
their bed. And when she ventured to return 
some days afterwards, she found the child adopted 
into the family, and called by the name of a 
son who had died in childhood — ' Heathcliff. 

Nevertheless, he had no enviable position. 
Cathy, indeed, was very thick with him, and the 
master had taken to him strangely, believing 
every word he said, " for that matter he said 
precious little, and generally the truth," but 
Mrs. Earnshaw disliked the little interloper, and 
never interfered in his behalf when Hindley, 
who hated him, thrashed and struck the sullen, 
patient child, who never complained, but bore 
all his bruises in silence. This endurance made 
old Earnshaw furious when he discovered the 
persecutions to which this mere baby was sub- 
jected; the child soon discovered it to be a most 
efficient instrument of vengeance. 

" I remember Mr. Earnshaw once bought a 
couple of colts at the parish fair, and gave the 



236 EMILY BRONTE. 

lads each one. Heathcliff took the handsomest, 
but it soon fell lame, and when he discovered it, 
he said to Hindley : 'You must exchange horses 
with me, I don't like mine; and if you don't I 
shall tell your father of the three thrashings 
you've given me this week, and show him my 
arm which is black to the shoulder.' Hindley 
put out his tongue, and cuffed him over the ears. 
' You'd better do it at once,' he persisted, es- 
caping to the porch (they were in the stable). 
* You'll have to ; and if I speak of these blows 
you'll get them back with interest.' * Off, dog ! ' 
cried Hindley, threatening him with an iron 
weight, used for weighing potatoes and hay. 
'Throw it,' he replied, standing still, 'and then 
I'll tell how you boasted you would turn me out 
of doors as soon as he died, and see whether he 
will not turn you out directly.' Hindley threw 
it, hitting him on the breast, and down he fell, 
but staggered up immediately, breathless and 
white ; and had not I prevented it, he Avould 
have gone just so to the master and got full 
revenge by letting his condition plead for him, 
intimating who had caused it. ' Take my colt, 
gypsy, then,' said young Earnshaw. 'And I pray 
that he may break your neck ; take him and be 
damned, you beggarly interloper ! and wheedle 
my father out of all he has : only afterwards 
show him what you are, imp of Satan. And 
take that ; I hope he'll kick out your brains ! ' 



'WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 237 

" Heathcliff had gone to loose the beast and 
shift it to his own stall ; he was passing behind 
it w^hen Hindley finished his speech by knocking 
him under its feet, and, without stopping to ex- 
amine whether his hopes were fulfilled, ran away 
as fast as he could. I was surprised to witness 
how coolly the child gathered himself up and 
went on with his intention ; exchanging saddles 
and all, and then sitting down on a bundle of 
hay to overcome the qualm which the violent 
blow occasioned, before he entered the house. 
I persuaded him easily to let me lay the blame 
of his bruises on the horse : he heeded little 
what tale was told so that he had what he 
wanted. He complained so seldom, indeed, of 
such things as these that I really thought him 
not vindictive ; I was deceived completely, as 
you will hear." 

So the division grew. This malignant, un- 
complaining child, with foreign skin and Eastern 
soul, could only breed discord in that Yorkshire 
home. He could not understand what was hon- 
orable by instinct to an English mind. He was 
quick to take an advantage, long-suffering, sly, 
nursing his revenge in silence like a vindictive 
slave, until at last the moment of retribution 
should be his ; sufficiently truthful and brave to 
have grown noble in another atmosphere, but 
with a ready bent to underhand and brooding 



238 



EMILY BRONTE. 



vengeance. Insensible, it seemed, to gratitude. 
Proud with the unreasoning pride of an Orien- 
tal ; cruel, and violently passionate. One soft 
and tender speck there was in this dark and 
sullen heart ; it was an exceedingly great and 
forbearing love for the sweet, saucy, naughty 
Catharine. 

But this one affection only served to augment 
the mischief that he wrought. He who had 
estranged son from father, husband from wife, 
severed brother from sister as completely ; for 
Hindley hated the swarthy child who was Cathy's 
favorite companion. When Mrs. Earnshaw died, 
two years after Heathcliff's advent, Hindley had 
learned to regard his father as an oppressor rather 
than a friend, and Heathcliff as an intolerable 
usurper. So, from the very beginning, he bred 
bad feeling in the house. 

In the course of time Mr. Earnshaw began to 
fail. His strength suddenly left him, and he 
grew half childish, irritable, and extremely jeal- 
ous of his authority. He considered any slight 
to Heathcliff as a slight to his own discretion ; 
so that, in the master's presence, the child was 
deferred to and courted from respect for that 
master's weakness, while, behind his back, the 
old wrongs, the old hatred, showed themselves 
unquenched. And so the child grew up bitter 
and distrustful. Matters got a little better for a 



'WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 239 

while, when the untamable Hindley was sent to 
college ; yet still there was disturbance and dis- 
quiet, for Mr. Earnshaw did not love his daughter 
Catharine, and his heart was yet further imbit- 
tered by the grumbling and discontent of old 
Joseph the servant ; the wearisomest, " self- 
righteous Pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible 
to take the promises to himself and fling the 
curses to his neighbors." But Catharine, though 
slighted for Heathcliff, and nearly always in 
trouble on his account, was much too fond of 
him to be jealous. "The greatest punishment 
we could invent for her was to keep her separate 
from Heathcliff. . . . Certainly she had ways 
with her such as I never saw a child take up 
before ; and she put all of us past our patience 
fifty times and oftener in a day ; from the hour 
she came down-stairs till the hour she went 
to bed, we hadn't a minute's security that she 
wouldn't be in mischief. Her spirits were always 
at, high-water mark, her tongue always going — 
singing, laughing, and plaguing everybody who 
would not do the same. A wild, wicked slip she 
was ; but she had the bonniest eye, the sweetest 
smile, and the lightest foot in the parish. And 
after all, I believe, she meant no harm ; for, when 
once she made you cry in good earnest, it seldom 
happened that she wouldn't keep your company 
and oblige you to be quiet that you might com- 



240 EMILY BRONTE. 

fort her. In play she liked exceedingly to act 
the little mistress, using her hands freely and 
commanding her companions." 

Suddenly this pretty, mischievous sprite was 
left fatherless ; Mr. Earnshaw died quietly, sit- 
ting in his chair by the fireside one October 
evening. Mr. Hindley, now a young man of 
twenty, came home to the funeral, to the great 
astonishment of the household bringing a wife 
with him. 

A rush of a lass, spare and bright-eyed, with a 
changing, hectic color, hysterical, and full of fan- 
cies, fickle as the winds, now flighty and full of 
praise and laughter, now peevish and languish- 
ing. For the rest, the very idol of her husband's 
heart. A word from her, a passing phrase of 
dislike for Heathcliff, was enough to revive all 
young Earnshavv's former hatred of the boy. 
Heathcliff was turned out of their society, no 
longer allowed to share Cathy's lessons, degraded 
to the position of an ordinary farm-servant. At 
first Heathcliff did not mind. Cathy taught him 
what she learned, and played or worked with 
him in the fields. Cathy ran wild with him, and 
had a share in all his scrapes ; they both bade 
fair to grow up regular little savages, while Hind- 
ley Earnshaw kissed and fondled his young wife, 
utterly heedless of their fate. 

An adventure suddenly changed the course of 



'WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 241 

their lives. One Sunday evening Cathy and 
Heathcliff ran down to Thrushcross Grange to 
peep through the windows and see how the httle 
Lintons spent their Sundays. They looked in, 
and saw Isabella at one end of the, to them, 
splendid drawing-room, and Edgar at the other, 
both in floods of tears, peevishly quarrelling. So 
elate were the two little savages from Wuthering 
Heights at this proof of their neighbors' inferi- 
ority, that they burst into peals of laughter. The 
little Lintons v^ere terrified, and, to frighten them 
still more, Cathy and Heathcliff made a variety 
of frightful noises ; they succeeded in terrifying 
not only the children but their silly parents, who 
imagined the yells to come from a gang of bur- 
glars, determined on robbing the house. They 
let the dogs loose, in this belief, and the bulldog 
seized Cathy's bare little ankle, for she had lost 
her shoes in the bog. While Heathcliff was 
trying to throttle off the brute, the man-servant 
came up, and, taking both the children prisoner, 
conveyed them into the lighted hall. There, to 
the humiliation and surprise of the Lintons, the 
lame little vagrant was discovered to be Miss 
Earnshaw, and her fellow-misdemeanant, " that 
strange acquisition my late neighbor made in his 
journey to Liverpool — a little Lascar, or an 
American or Spanish castaway." 

Cathy stayed five weeks at Thrushcross Grange 
16 



242 EMILY BRONTE, 

by which time her ankle was quite well, and her 
manners much improved. Young Mrs. Earn- 
shaw had tried her best, during this visit, to en- 
deavor by a judicious mixture of fine clothes and 
flattery to raise the standard of Cathy's self- 
respect. She went home, then, a beautiful and 
finely dressed young lady, to find Heathcliff in 
equal measure deteriorated ; the mere farm- 
servant, whose clothes were soiled with three 
months' service in mire and dust, with unkempt 
hair and grimy face and hands. 

" * Heathcliff, you may come forward,' cried 
Mr. Hindley, enjoying his discomfiture, and grati- 
fied to see what a forbidding young blackguard 
he would be compelled to present himself. * You 
may come and wish Miss Catharine welcome, 
like the other servants.* Cathy, catching a 
glimpse of her friend in his concealment, flew 
to embrace him, she bestowed seven or eight 
kisses on his cheek within the second, and then 
stopped, and, drawing back, burst into a laugh, 
exclaiming : ' Why, how very black and cross 
you look ! and how — how funny and grim ! 
But that's because I'm used to Edgar and Isa- 
bella Linton.' 

"'Well, Heathcliff, have you forgotten me.? 
Shake hands, Heathcliff,' said Mr. Earnshaw, 
condescendingly, 'once in a way, that is per- 
mitted.' 



* WUTHERING HEIGHTS? 243 

" * I shall not,' replied the boy, finding his 
tongue at last. ' I shall not stand to be laughed 
at. I shall not bear it.' " 

From this time Catharine's friendship with 
Heathcliff was chequered by intermittent jeal- 
ousy on his side and intermittent disgust upon 
hers ; and for this evil turn, far more than for 
any coarser brutality, Heathcliff longed for re- 
venge on Hindley Earnshaw. Meanwhile Edgar 
Linton, greatly smitten with the beautiful Catha- 
rine, went from time to time to visit at Wuther- 
ing Heights. He would have gone far oftener, 
but that he had a terror of Hindley Earnshaw's 
reputation, and shrank from encountering him. 

For this fine young Oxford gentleman, this 
proud young husband, was sinking into worse 
excesses than any of his wild Earnshaw ances- 
tors. A defiant sorrow had driven him to des- 
peration. ■ In the summer following Catharine's 
visit to Thrushcross Grange, his only son and 
heir had been born. An occasion of great re- 
joicings, suddenly dashed by the discovery that 
his wife, his idol, was fast sinking in consump- 
tion. Hindley refused to believe it, and his wife 
kept her flighty spirits till the end ; but one 
night, while leaning on his shoulder, a fit of 
coughing took her, — a very slight one. She 
put her two hands about his neck, her face 
changed, and she was dead. 



244 



EMILY BRONTE, 



Hindley grew desperate, and gave himself over 
to wild companions, to excesses of dissipation, 
and tyranny. *' His treatment of Heathcliff was 
enough to make a fiend of a saint." Heathcliff 
bore it with sullen patience, as he had borne the 
blows and kicks of his childhood, turning them 
into a lever for extorting advantages ; the aches 
and wants of his body were redeemed by a fierce 
joy at heart, for in this degradation of Hindley 
Earnshaw he recognized the instrument of his 
own revenge. 

Time went on, ever making a sharper difference 
between this gypsy hind and his beautiful young 
mistress ; time went on, leaving the two fast 
friends enough, but leaving also in the heart of 
Heathcliff a passionate rancor against the man 
who, of set purpose, had made him unworthy of 
Catharine's hand, and of the other man on whom 
it was to be bestowed. 

For Edgar Linton was infatuated with the 
naughty, tricksy young beauty of Wuthering 
Heights. Her violent temper did not frighten 
him, although his own character was singularly 
sweet, placid, and feeble ; her compromising 
friendship with such a mere boor as young 
Heathcliff was only a trifling annoyance, easily 
to be excused. And when his own father and 
mother died of a fever caught in nursing her he 
did not love her less for the sorrow she brought. 



' WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 245 

A fever she had wilfully taken in despair, and a 
sudden sickness of life. One evening pretty 
Cathy came into the kitchen to tell Nelly Dean 
that she had engaged herself to marry Edgar 
Linton. Heathcliff, unseen, was seated on the 
other side the settle, on a bench by the wall, 
quite hidden from those at the fireside. 

Cathy was very elated, but' not at all happy. 
Edgar was rich, handsome, young, gentle, pas- 
sionately in love with her ; still she was misera- 
ble. Nelly Dean, who was nursing the baby 
Hareton by the fire, finally grew out of patience 
with her whimsical discontent. 

" ' Your brother will be pleased,' " she said ; 
" ' the old lady and gentleman will not object, I 
think ; you will escape from a disorderly, com- 
fortless home into a wealthy, respectable one ; 
and you love Edgar, and Edgar loves you. All 
seems smooth and easy ; where is the obstacle t ' 

'''Here! and here!' replied Catharine, strik- 
ing one hand on her forehead and the other on 
her breast. ' In whichever place the soul lives. 
In my soul and in my heart I'm convinced I'm 
wrong.' 

" * That's very strange. I cannot make it 
out.' 

'' ' It's my secret. But if you will not mock 
at me, I'll explain it. I can't do it distinctly ; 
but I'll give you a feeling of how I feel.' 



246 



EMILY BRONTE. 



" She seated herself by me again ; her coun- 
tenance grew sadder and graver, and her clasped 
hands trembled. 

** ' Nelly, do you never dream queer dreams ? ' 
she said, suddenly, after some minutes' reflection, 

" ' Yes, now and then,' I answered. 

"*And so do I. I've dreamt in my life 
dreams that have stayed with me ever after 
and changed my ideas ; they've gone through 
and through me like wine through water, and 
altered the color of my mind. And this is one : 
I'm going to tell it, but take care not to smile at 
any part of it.' 

'' • Oh, don't, Miss Catharine.' I cried. * We're 
dismal enough without conjuring up ghosts and 
visions to perplex us . . .' 

" She was vexed, but she did not proceed. Ap- 
parently taking up another subject, she recom- 
menced in a short time. 

" * If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be ex- 
tremely miserable.' 

" * Because you are not fit to go there,' I an- 
swered ; ' all sinners would be miserable in 
heaven.* 

" * But it is not that. I dreamt once that I was 
there.' 

" * I tell you, I won't hearken to your dreams. 
Miss Catharine. I'll go to bed,' I interrupted 
a^ain. 



' WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 247 

" She laughed, and held me down, for I made a 
motion to leave my chair. 

" ' This is nothing/ cried she ; ' I was only go- 
ing to say that heaven did not seem to be any 
home ; and I broke my heart with weeping to 
come back to earth ; and the angels were so 
angry that they flung me out into the middle of 
the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights, 
where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to 
explain my secret as well as the other. I've no 
more business to marry Edgar Linton than I 
have to be in heaven ; and if the wicked man 
in there hadn't brought HeathclifF so low, I 
shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade 
me to marry HeathclifF now, so he shall never 
know how I love him ; and that, not because he's 
handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself 
than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, 
his and mine are the same ; and Linton's is as 
different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost 
from fire.' 

" Ere this speech ended, I became sensible of 
Heathcliff's presence. Having noticed a slight 
movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise 
from the bench and steal out noiselessly. He 
had listened till he had heard Catharine say that 
it would degrade her to marry him, and then he 
stayed to hear no further. My companion, sit- 
ting on the ground, was prevented by the back 



248 EMILY BRONTE. 

of the settle from remarking his presence or de- 
parture ; but I started, and bade her hush. 

" ' Why ? ' she asked, gazing nervously round. 

"'Joseph is here,' I answered, catching oppor- 
tunely the roll of his cart-wheels up the road, 
* and Heathcliff will be coming in with him. . . . 
Unfortunate creature, as soon as you become 
Mrs. Linton he loses friend and love and all. 
Have you considered how you'll bear the sepa- 
ration, and how he'll bear to be quite deserted 
in the world ? Because, Miss Catharine . . .' 

" ' He quite deserted ! we separated ! ' she ex- 
claimed, with an accent of indignation. 'Who 
is to separate us, pray ! They'll meet the fate 
of Milo. Not as long as I live, Ellen ; for no 
mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of 
the earth might melt into nothing, before I 
could consent to forsake HeathcUff. . . . My 
great miseries in this world have been Heath- 
cliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from 
the beginning. My great thought in living is 
himself. If all else perished, and he remained, 
/ should still continue to be ; and if all else 
remained and he were annihilated, the universe 
would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not 
seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like 
the foliage in the woods : time will change it, 
I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. 
My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal 



' WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 249 

rocks beneath ; a source of little visible delight, 
but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff. He's 
always, always in my mind : not as a pleasure, 
any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, 
but as my own being. So don't talk of our 
separation again ; it is impracticable ; and — ' 

'* She paused, and hid her face in the folds of 
my gown ; but I jerked it forcibly away. I was 
out of patience with her folly." 

Poor Cathy ! beautiful, haughty, and capri- 
cious ; who should guide and counsel her .'' her 
besotted, drunken brother } the servant who did 
not love her and was impatient of her weather- 
cock veerings } No. And Heathcliff, who, bru- 
talized and rude as he was, at least did love and 
understand her } Heathcliff, who had walked 
out of the house, her rejection burning in his 
ears, not to enter it till he was fitted to exact 
both love and vengeance. He did not come 
back that night, though the thunder rattled 
and the rain streamed over Wuthering Heights ; 
though Cathy, shawlless in the wind and wet, 
stood calling him through the violent storms 
that drowned and bafifled her cries. 

All night she would not leave the hearth, but 
lay on the settle sobbing and moaning, all soaked 
as she was, with her hands on her face and her 
face to the wall. A strange augury for her mar- 
riage, these first dreams of her affianced love — 



250 



EMILY BRONTE. 



not dreams, indeed, but delirium ; for the next 
morning she was burning and tossing in fever, 
near to death's door as it seemed. 

But she won through, and Edgar's parents 
carried her home to nurse. As we know, they 
took the infection and died within a few days 
of each other. Nor was this the only ravage 
that the fever made. Catharine, always hasty 
and fitful in temper, was henceforth subject at 
rare intervals to violent and furious rages, which 
threatened her life and reason by their extrem- 
ity. The doctor said she ought not to be 
crossed ; she ought to have her own way, and 
it was nothing less than murder in her eyes for 
any one to presume to stand up and contradict 
her. But the strained temper, the spoiled, au- 
thoritative ways, the saucy caprices of his bride, 
were no blemishes in Edgar Linton's eyes. "He 
was infatuated, and believed himself the happiest 
man alive on the day he led her to Gimmerton 
Chapel three years subsequent to his father's 
death." 

Despite so many gloomy auguries the mar- 
riage was a happy one at first. Catharine was 
petted and humored by every one, with Edgar 
for a perpetual worshipper ; his pretty, weak- 
natured sister Isabella as an admiring com- 
panion ; and for the necessary spectator of her 
happiness, Nelly Dean, who had been induced 
to quit her nursUng at Wuthering Heights. 



'Wl/THERING heights: 25 I 

Suddenly Heathcliff returned, not the old 
Heathcliff, but a far more dangerous enemy, a 
tall, athletic, well-formed man, intelligent and 
severe. *'A half-civilized ferocity lurked yet 
in the depressed brows and eyes, full of black 
fire, but it was subdued ; and his manner was 
even dignified, though too stern for grace." A 
formidable rival for boyish Edgar Linton, with 
his only son's petulance, constitutional timidity, 
and weak health. Cathy, though she was really 
attached to her husband, gave him cruel pain by 
her undisguised and childish delight at Heath- 
cUff' s return ; he had a presentiment that evil 
would come of the old friendship thus revived, 
and would willingly have forbidden Heathcliff 
the house ; but Edgar, so anxious lest any cross 
be given to his wife, with a double reason then 
for tenderly guarding her health, could not in- 
flict a serious sorrow upon her with only a base- 
less jealousy for its excuse. Thus, Heathcliff 
became intimate at Thrushcross Grange, the 
second house to which he was made welcome, 
the second hearth he meant to ruin. At this 
time he was lodging at Wuthering Heights. 
On his return he had first intended, he told 
Catharine, ''just to have one glimpse of your 
face, a stare of surprise, perhaps, and pretended 
pleasure ; afterwards settle my score with Hind- 
ley ; and then prevent the law by doing execu- 
tion on myself." 



252 



EMILY BRONTE. 



Catharine's welcome changed this plan ; her 
brother was safe from Heathcliff's violence, but 
not from his hate. The score was being set- 
tled in a different fashion. Hindley — who was 
eager to get money for his gambling and who 
had drunk his wits away — was only too glad 
to take Heathcliff as lodger, boon-companion, 
and fellow card-player at once. And Heathcliff 
was content to wait and take his revenge sip by 
sip, encouraging his old oppressor in drink and 
gaming, watching him lose acre after acre of his 
land, knowing that sooner or later Earnshaw 
would lose everything, and he, Heathcliff, be 
master of Wuthering Heights, with Hindley's 
son for his servant. Revenge is sweet. Mean- 
while, Wuthering Heights was a handy lodging, 
at walking distance from the Grange. 

But soon his visits were cut off. Isabella 
Linton — a charming girl of eighteen with an 
espiegle face and a thin sweetness of disposition 
that could easily turn sour — Isabella Linton fell 
in love with Heathcliff. To do him justice he 
had never dreamed of marrying her, until one 
day Catharine, in a fit of passion, revealed the 
poor girl's secret. Heathcliff pretended not to 
believe her, but Isabel was her brother's heir, 
and to marry her, inherit Edgar's money, and 
ill-use his sister, would, indeed, be a fair revenge 
on Catharine's husband. 



^WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 2^3 

At first it was merely as an artistically pleas- 
urable idea, a castle in the air, to be dreamed 
about, not built, that this scheme suggested it- 
self to Heathcliff. But one day, when he had 
been detected in an experimental courting of 
Isabel, Edgar Linton, glad of an excuse, turned 
him out of doors. Then, in a paroxysm of 
hatred, never-satisfied revenge, and baffled pas- 
sion, Heathcliff struck with the poisoned weapon 
ready to his hand. He persuaded Isabel to run 
away with him — no difficult task — and they 
eloped together one night to be married. 

Isabella — poor, weak, romantic, sprightly Isa- 
bel — was not missed at first ; for very terrible 
trouble had fallen upon the Grange. Catharine, 
in a paroxysm of rage at the dismissal of Heath- 
cliff, quarrelled violently with Edgar, and shut 
herself up in her own room. For three days 
and nights she remained there, eating nothing ; 
Edgar, secluded in his study, expecting every 
moment that she would come down and ask his 
forgiveness ; Nelly Dean, who alone knew of her 
determined starving, resolved to say nothing 
about it, and conquer, once for all, the haughty 
and passionate spirit which possessed her beauti- 
ful young mistress. 

So three days went by. Catharine still re- 
fused all her food, and unsympathetic Ellen still 
resolved to let her starve, if she chose, without a 



254 EMILY BRONTE. 

remonstrance. On the third day Catharine un- 
barred her door and asked for food ; and now 
Ellen Dean was too frightened to exult. Her 
mistress was wasted, haggard, wild, as if by 
months of illness ; the too presumptuous ser- 
vant remembered the doctor's warning, and 
dreaded her master's anger, when he should dis- 
cover Catharine's real condition. 

On this servant's obstinate cold-heartedness 
rests the crisis of ' Wuthering Heights ; ' had 
Ellen Dean, at the first, attempted to console the 
violent, childish Catharine, had she acquainted 
Edgar of the real weakness underneath her pride, 
Catharine would have had no fatal illness and 
left no motherless child ; and had moping Isabel, 
instead of being left to weep alone about the 
park and garden, been conducted to her sister's 
room and shown a real sickness to nurse, a real 
misery to mend, she would not have gone away 
with Heathcliff, and wedded herself to sorrow, 
out of a fanciful love in idleness. It is charac- 
teristic of Emily Bronte s genius that she should 
choose so very simple and homely a means for 
the production of most terrible results. 

A fit she had had alone and untended during 
those three days of isolated starvation had unset- 
tled Catharine's reason. The gradual coming-on 
of her delirium is given with a masterly pathos 
that Webster need not have made more strong, 
nor Fletcher more lovely and appealing : 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 



255 



" A minute previously she was violent ; now, 
supported on one arm and not noticing my re- 
fusal to obey her, she seemed to find childish 
diversion in pulling the feathers from the rents 
she had just made in the pillows and ranging 
them on the sheet according to their different 
species : her mind had strayed to other associa- 
tions. 

'"That's a turkey's,' she murmured to herself, 
' and this is a wild duck's, and this is a pigeon's. 
Ah, they put pigeons' feathers in the pillows — 
no wonder I couldn't die ! Let me take care to 
throw it on the floor when I lie down. And 
here is a moorcock's ; and this — I should know 
it among a thousand — it's a lapwing's. Bonny 
bird ; wheeling over our heads in the middle of 
the moor. It wanted to get to its nest, for the 
clouds had touched the swells, and it felt rain 
coming. This feather was picked up from the 
heath, the bird was not shot : we saw its nest in 
the winter, full of little skeletons. Heathcliff 
set a trap over it and the old ones dare not 
come. I made him promise he'd never shoot a 
lapwing after that, and he didn't. Yes, here 
are more ! Did he shoot my lapwings, Nelly } 
Are they red, any of them } Let me look.' 

" * Give over with that baby-work ! ' I inter- 
rupted, dragging the pillow away, and turning 
the holes towards the mattress, for she was re- 



256 EMILY BRONTE. 

moving its contents by handfiils. * Lie down 
and shut your eyes : you're wandering. There's 
a mess ! The down is flying about Hke snow.' 

" I went here and there collecting it. 

" ' I see in you, Nelly,' she continued, dream- 
ily, * an aged woman : you have gray hair and 
bent shoulders. This bed is the fairy cave under 
Peniston Crag, and you are gathering elf-bolts to 
hurt our heifers ; pretending while I am near 
that they are only locks of wool. That's what 
you'll come to fifty years hence : I know you 
are not so now. I'm not wandering ; you're 
mistaken, or else I should believe you really were 
that withered hag, and I should think I was 
under Peniston Crag ; and I'm conscious it's 
night, and there are two candles on the table 
making the black press shine like jet.' 

" ' The black press t Where is that } ' I asked. 
* You are talking in your sleep.' 

" * It's against the wall as it always is,' she re- 
plied. ' It does appear odd. I see a face in it ! ' 

" * There's no press in the room and never 
was,' said I, resuming my seat, and looping up 
the curtain that I might watch her. 

" ' T>Q>xil you see that face t ' she inquired, gaz- 
ing earnestly at the mirror. 

" And say what I could I was incapable of 
making her comprehend it to be her own ; so I 
rose and covered it with a shawl. 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS. 



257 



" ' It's behind there still ! ' she pursued, anx- 
iously, ' and it stirred. Who is it ? I hope it 
will not come out when you are gone. Oh, 
Nelly ! the room is haunted.! I'm afraid of being 
alone.' 

" I took her hand in mine, and bid her be com- 
posed, for a succession of shudders convulsed 
her frame, and she would keep straining her gaze 
towards the glass. 

" ' There's nobody here ! ' I insisted. ^ It was 
yourself J Mrs. Linton : you knew it a while 
since.' 

"'Myself!' she gasped, 'and the clock is 
striking twelve. It's true then ! that's dread- 
ful ! ' 

"Her fingers clutched the clothes, and gathered 
them over her eyes." 

This scene was the beginning of a long and 
fearful brain-fever, from which, owing to her 
husband's devoted and ceaseless care, Catharine 
recovered her life, but barely her reason. That 
hung in the balance, a touch might settle it on 
the side of health or of madness. Not until the 
beginning of this fever was Isabella's flight dis- 
covered. Her brother was too concerned with 
his wife's illness to feel as heart-broken as Heath- 
cliff hoped. He was not violent against his sis- 
ter, nor even angry ; only, with the mild, steady 
persistence of his nature, he refused to hold 
17 



258 



EMILY BRONTE. 



any communication with Heathclifi''s wife. But 
when, at the beginning of Catharine's recovery, 
Ellen Dean received a letter from Isabella, de- 
claring the extreme wretchedness of her life at 
Wuthering Heights, where Heathcliff was mas- 
ter now, Edgar Linton willingly accorded the 
servant permission to go and see his sister. 

Arrived at Wuthering Heights, she found 
that once plentiful homestead sorely ruined and 
deteriorated by years of thriftless dissipation ; 
and Isabella Linton, already metamorphosed into 
a wan and listless slattern, broken-spirited and 
pale. As a pleasant means of entertaining his 
wife and her old servant, Heathchtr discoursed 
on his love for Catharine and on his conviction 
that she could not really care for Edgar Linton. 

" * Catharine has a heart as deep as I have : 
the sea could be as readily contained in that 
horse-trough, as her whole atlection monopolized 
by him. Tush ! He is scarcely a degree dearer 
to her than her dog or her horse. It is not in 
him to be loved like me. How can she love in 
him what he has not } ' " 

Nelly Dean, unhindered by the sight of Isa- 
bella's misery, or by the memory of the wrongs 
her master already suffered from this estimable 
neighbor, was finally cajoled into taking a letter 
from him to the frail, half-dying Catharine, ap- 
pointing an interview. For Heathcliff persisted 



'WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 259 

that he had no wish to make a disturbance, or to 
exasperate Mr. Linton, but merely to see his old 
playfellow again, to learn from her own lips how 
she was, and whether in anything he could serve 
her. 

The letter was taken and given ; the meeting 
came about one Sunday when all the household 
save Ellen Dean were at church. Catharine, 
pale, apathetic, but more than ever beautiful in 
her mazed weakness of mind and body ; Heath- 
cliff, violent in despair, seeing death in her face, 
alternately upbraiding her fiercely for causing 
him so much misery, and tenderly caressing the 
altered, dying face. Never was so strange a 
love scene. It is not a scene to quote, not no- 
ticeable for its eloquent passages or the beauty 
of casual phrases, but for its sustained passion, 
desperate, pure, terrible. It must be read in its 
sequence and its entirety. Nor can I think of 
any parting more terrible, more penetrating in 
its anguish than this. Romeo and Juliet part ; 
but they have known each other but for a week. 
There is no scene that Heathcliff can look upon 
in which he has not played with Catharine : and, 
now that she is dying, he must not watch with 
her. Troilus and Cressida part ; but Cressida 
is false, and Troilus has his country left him. 
What country has Heathcliff, the outcast, name- 
less adventurer } Antonio and his Duchess ; 



200 EMILY BKOA'TE. 

but they have belonged to each other and been 
happy ; these two are eternally separate. Their 
passion is only heightened by its absolute free- 
dom from desire ; even the wicked and desperate 
Heathcliff has no ignoble love for Catharine ; all 
he asks is that she live, and that he may see her ; 
that she may be happy even if it be with Linton. 
" I would never have banished him from her 
society, while she desired his," asserts Heathcliff, 
and now she is mad with grief and dying. The 
consciousness of their strained and thwarted na- 
tures, moreover, makes us the more regretful 
they must sever. Had he survived, Romeo 
would have been happy with Rosalind, after all ; 
probably Juliet would have married Paris. But 
where will Heathcliff love again, the perverted, 
morose, brutalized Heathcliff, whose only human 
tenderness has been his love for the capricious, 
lively, beautiful young creature, now dazed, now 
wretched, now dying in his arms "i The very 
remembrance of his violence and cruelty ren- 
ders more awful the spectacle of this man, sit- 
ting with his dying love, silent ; their faces hid 
against each other, and washed by each other's 
tears. 

At last they parted: Catharine unconscious, 
half-dead. That night her puny, seven-months* 
child was born ; that night the mother died, un- 
utterably changed from the bright, imperious 



'WUTIIERING HEIGHTS? 26 1 

creature who entered that house as a kingdom, 
not yet a year ago. By her side, in the darkened 
chamber, her husband lay, worn out with an- 
guish. Outside, dashing his head against the 
trees in a Berserkcr-vvrath with fate, Ilcathcliff 
raged, not to be consoled. 

"' Ilcr senses never returned : she recognized 
nol)ody from the time you left her,' I said. * She 
lies with a sweet smile upon her face, and her 
latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days. 
Her life closed in a gentle dream — may she 
wake as kindly in the other world ! ' 

"'May she wake in torment!' he cried, with 
frightful vehemence, stamping his foot and groan- 
ing in a paroxysm of ungovernable passion. 
'Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she.'* 
Not there — not in heaven — not perislied — 
where ? Oh ! you said you cared ^ nothing for 
my sufferings. And I pray one prayer. I re- 
peat it till my tongue stiffens. Catharine Earn- 
shaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. 
You said I killed you — haunt me then! The 
murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. 
I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be 
with me always — take any form — drive me 
mad ! only do not leave mc in this abyss where 
I cannot find you ! Oh, God, it is unutterable ! 
I cannot YiwQ without my life. I cannot live with- 
out my soul.' 



262 EMILY BRONTE. 

" He dashed his head against the knotted 
trunk ; and, hfting up his eyes, howled, not Hke 
a man, but hke a savage beast being goaded to 
death with knives and spears. I observed several 
splashes of blood about the bark of the tree, and 
his hand and forehead were both stained ; proba- 
bly the scene I witnessed was the repetition of 
others acted during the night. It hardly moved 
my compassion, it appalled me." 

From this time a slow, insidious madness 
worked in Heathcliff. When it was at its height 
he was not fierce, but strangely silent, scarcely 
breathing ; hushed, as a person who draws his 
breath to hear some sound only just not heard as 
yet, as a man who strains his eyes to see the 
speck on the horizon which will rise the next 
moment, the next instant, and grow into the ship 
that brings his treasure home. *' When I sat-.in 
the house with Ilareton, it seemed that on going 
out I should meet her ; when I walked on the 
moors. I should meet her coming in. When I 
went from home, I hastened to return ; she must 
be somewhere at the Heights I was certain ; and 
when I slept in her chamber — I was beaten out 
of that. I couldn't lie there ; for the moment I 
closed my eyes, she was either outside the win- 
dow, or sliding back the panels, or entering the 
room, or even resting her darling head on the 
same pillow, as she did when a child ; and I must 



' WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 263 

open my lids to see. And so I opened and 
closed them a hundred times a night to be al- 
ways disappointed. It was a strange way of 
killing, not by inches, but by fractions of hair- 
breadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a 
hope through eighteen years." This mania of 
expectation stretching the nerves to their utter- 
most strain, relaxed sometimes ; and then Heath- 
cliff was dangerous. When filled with the 
thought of Catharine, the world was indifferent to 
him ; but when this possessing memory abated 
ever so little, he remembered that the world 
was his enemy, had cheated him of Catharine. 
Then avarice, ambition, revenge, entered into his 
soul, and his last state was worse than his first. 
Cruel, with the insane cruelty, the blood mania 
of an Ezzelin, he never was ; his cruelties had a 
purpose ; the sufferings of the victims were a de- 
tail, not an end. Yet something of that despot's 
character, refined into torturing the mind and 
not the flesh, chaste, cruel, avaricious of power, 
something of that southern morbidness in crime, 
distinguishes Heathcliff from the villains of mod- 
ern English tragedies. Placed in the Italian Re- 
naissance, with Cyril Tourneur for a chronicler, 
Heathcliff would not have awakened the out- 
burst of incredulous indignation which greeted 
his appearance in a nineteenth-century ro- 
mance. 



264 



EMILY BRONTE. 



Soon after the birth of the younger Catharine, 
Isabella Heathcliff escaped from her husband to 
the South of England. He made no attempt to 
follow her, and in her new home she gave birth 
to a son, Linton — the fruit of timidity and 
hatred, fear and revulsion — ''from the first she 
reported him to be an aihng, peevish creature." 
Meanwhile little Catharine grew up the very 
light of her home, an exquisite creature with her 
father's gentle, constant nature inspired by a 
spark of her mother's fire and lightened by a 
gleam of her wayward caprice. She had the 
Earnshaws' handsome dark eyes and the Lintons' 
fair skin, regular features and curling yellow 
hair. " That capacity for intense attachments 
reminded me of her mother. Still she did not 
resemble her ; her anger was never furious ; her 
love never fierce ; it was deep and tender." 
Cathy was in truth a charming creature, though 
less passionate and strange a nature than Cath- 
arine Earnshaw, not made to be loved as wildly 
nor as deeply mistrusted. 

Edgar, grown a complete hermit, devoted him- 
self to his child, who spent a life as happy and 
secluded as a princess in a fairy story, seldom 
venturing outside the limits of the park and 
never by herself. Edgar had never forgotten 
his sorrow for the death of his young wife ; he 
loved her memory with steady constancy. If — 



* WUTHERING HEIGHTS. 



265 



and I think we may — if we allow that every 
author has some especial quality with which, in 
more or less degree, he endows all his children 
— if we grant that Shakespeare's people are all 
meditative, even the sprightly Rosalind and the 
clownish Dogberry — if we allow that all our 
acquaintances in Dickens are a trifle self-con- 
scious, in George Eliot conscientious to such 
an extent that even Tito Melema feels remorse 
for conduct which, granted his period and his 
character, would more naturally have given him 
satisfaction — then we must allow that Emily 
Bronte s special mark is constancy, — passionate, 
insane constancy in Heathcliff ; perverse, but 
intense in the elder Catharine ; steady and holy 
in Edgar Linton. Even the hard and narrow 
Ellen Dean, even Joseph, the hypocritical Phar- 
isee, are constant until death. Wild Hindley 
Earnshaw drinks himself to death for grief at 
losing his consumptive wife ; Hareton loves to 
the end the man who has usurped his place, de- 
graded him, fed him on blows and exaction : and 
it is- constancy in absence that imbitters and 
sickens the younger Catharine. Even Isabella 
Heathcliff, weak as she is, is not fickle. Even 
Linton Heathcliff, who, of all the characters in 
fiction, may share with Barnes Newcome the 
bad eminence of supreme unlovableness, even he 
loves his mother and Catharine, and, in his self- 
ish way, loves them to the end. 



266 EMILY BRONTE. 

The years passed, nothing happened, save 
that Hindley Earnshaw died, and Heathcliff, 
to whom every yard had been mortgaged, took 
possession of the place ; Hareton, who should 
have been the first gentleman in the neighbor- 
hood, " being reduced to a state of complete de- 
pendence on his father's inveterate enemy, lives 
as a servant in his own house, deprived of the 
advantages of wages, quite unable to right himself 
because of his friendlessness, and his ignorance 
that he has been wronged." 

The eventless years went by till Catharine 
was thirteen, when Mrs. Heathcliff died, and Ed- 
gar went to the South of England to fetch her 
son. Little Cathy, during her father's absence, 
grew impatient of her confinement to the park ; 
there was no one to escort her over the moors, 
so one day she leapt the fence, got lost, and was 
finally sheltered at Wuthering Heights, of which 
place and of all its inmates she had been kept in 
total ignorance. She promised to keep the visit 
a secret from her father, lest he should dismiss 
Ellen Dean. She was very indignant at being 
told that rudely bred Hareton was her cousin ; 
and when that night Linton — delicate, pretty, 
pettish Linton — arrived, she infinitely preferred 
his cousinship. 

The next morning she found Linton gone, his 
father having sent for him to Wuthering Heights ; 



' WUTHERIJVG heights: 267 

Edgar Linton, however, did not tell his daughter 
that her cousin was so near, he would not for 
worlds she should cross the threshold of that 
terrible house. But one day, Cathy and Ellen 
Dean met Heathcliff on the moors, and he half 
persuaded, half forced them to come home and 
see his son, grown a most despicable, puling, 
ailing creature, half-violent, half-terrified. Cathy's 
kind little heart did not see the faults, she 
only saw that her cousin was ill, unhappy, in 
need of her ; she was easily entrapped, one win- 
ter, when her father and Ellen Dean were both 
ill, into a secret engagement with this boy-cousin, 
the only lad, save uncouth Hareton, whom she 
had ever seen. 

Every night, when her day's nursing was done, 
she rode over to Wuthering Heights to pet and 
fondle Linton. Heathcliff did all he could to 
favor the plan. He knew his son was dying, 
notwithstanding that every care was taken to 
preserve the heir of Wuthering Heights and 
Thrushcross Grange. It is true that Cathy had 
a rival claim ; to marry her to Linton would be 
to secure the title, get a wife for his dying son to 
preserve the line of inheritance, and certainly 
to break Edgar Linton's heart. Heathcliff's love 
of revenge and love of power combined to make 
the scheme a thing to strive for and desire. 

He grew desperate as the boy got weaker and 



268 EMILY BRONTE. 

weaker ; it was but too likely that he would die 
before his dying uncle, and, if Edgar Linton 
survived, Thrushcross Grange was lost to Heath- 
cliff. As a last resource he made his son write 
to Edgar Linton and beg for an interview on 
neutral ground. Edgar, who, ignorant of Linton 
Heathcliff's true character, saw no reason why 
Cathy should not marry her cousin if they loved 
each other, allowed Ellen Dean to take her little 
mistress, now seventeen years old, on to the 
moors where Linton Heathcliff was to meet them. 
Cathy was loath to leave her father even for an 
hour, he was so ill ; but she had been told Lin- 
ton was dying, so nerved herself to go once more 
on the moors : they found Linton in a strange 
state, terrified, exhausted, despondent, making 
spasmodic love to Cathy as if it were a lesson he 
had been beaten into learning. She wished to 
return, but the boy declared himself, and looked, 
too ill to go back alone. They escorted him 
home to the Heights, and Heathcliff persuaded 
them to enter, saying he would go for a doctor 
for his sick lad. But, once they were in the 
house, he showed his hand. The doors were 
bolted ; the servants and Hareton away. Neither 
tears nor prayers would induce him to let his 
victims go till Catharine was Linton's wife, and 
so, he told her, till her father had died in soli- 
tude. But five days after, Catharine Linton, 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 



269 



now Catharine Heathcliff, contrived an escape 
in time to console her father's dying hours with 
a false belief in her happiness ; a noble lie, for 
Edgar Linton died contented, kissing his daugh- 
ter's cheek, ignorant of the misery in store for 
her. 

The next day Heathcliff came over to the 
Grange to recapture his prey, but now Catharine 
did not mind ; her father dead, she received all 
the affronts and stings of fate with an enduring 
apathy; it was only her that they injured. A 
few days after Linton died in the night, alone 
with his bride. After a year's absolute misery 
and loneliness, Catharine's lot was a little 
lightened by Mr. Heathcliff's preferring Ellen 
Dean to the vacant post of housekeeper at 
Wuthering Heights. 

For the all-absorbing presence of Catharine 
Earnshaw had nearly secluded Heathcliff from 
enmity with the world ; he was seldom violent 
now. He became yet more and more disin- 
clined to society, sitting alone, seldom eating, 
often walking about the whole night. His face 
changed, and the look of brooding hate gave way 
to a yet more alarming expression — an excited, 
wild, unnatural appearance of joy. He com- 
plained of no illness, yet he was very pale, blood- 
less, *'and his teeth visible now and then in a 
kind of smile ; his frame shivering, not as one 



2/0 EMILY BRONTE. 

shivers with chill or weakness, but as a tight- 
stretched cord vibrates — a strong thriUing^ 
rather than trembUng." At last his mysterious 
absorption, the stress of his expectation, became 
so intense that he could not eat. Animated 
with hunger, he would sit down to his meal, 
then suddenly start, as if he saw something, 
glance at the door or the window and go out. 
Weary and pale, he could not sleep ; but left his 
bed hurriedly, and went out to pace the garden 
till break of day. " * It is not my fault,' he re- 
plied, * that I cannot eat or rest. I assure you it 
is through no settled design. I'll do both as 
soon as I possibly can. But you might as well 
bid a man struggling in the water rest within 
arm's-length of the shore. I must reach it first 
and then I'll rest. As to repenting of my injus- 
tices, I've done no injustice and I repent of noth- 
ing. I'm too happy, and yet I'm not happy 
enough. My soul's bliss kills my body, but does 
not satisfy itself.' " 

Meanwhile the schemes of a life, the deeply 
laid purposes of his revenge, were toppling un- 
heeded all round him, like a house of cards. His 
son was dead. Hareton Earnshaw, the real heir 
of Wuthering Heights, and Catharine, the real 
heir of Thrushcross Grange, had fallen in love 
with each other. A most unguessed-at and un- 
likely finale ; yet most natural. For Catharine 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 



271 



was spoiled, acomplished, beautiful, proud — yet 
most affectionate and tender-hearted : and Hare- 
ton rude, surly, ignorant, fierce ; yet true as steel, 
stanch, and with a very loving faithful heart, 
constant even to the man who had, of set pur- 
pose, brutalized him and kept him in servitude. 
" ' Hareton is damnably fond of me ! ' laughed 
Heathcllff. ' You'll own that I've outmatched 
Hindley there. If the dead villain could rise 
from the grave to abuse me for his offspring's 
wrongs, I should have the fun of seeing the said 
offspring fight him back again, indignant that he 
should dare to rail at . the one friend he has in 
the world.* 

*' ' He'll never be able to emerge from his 
bathos of coarseness and ignorance,' " cried 
Heathcliff in exultation ; but love can do as 
much as hatred. Heathcliff, himself as great 
a boor at twenty, contrived to rub off his clown- 
ishness in order to revenge himself upon his 
enemies ; Catharine Linton's love inspired Hare- 
ton to as great an effort. This odd, rough love- 
story, as harshly sweet as whortle-berries, as dry 
and stiff in its beauty as purple heather-sprays, 
is the most purely human, the only tender 
interest of Wuthering Heights. It is the nec- 
essary and lawful anti-climax to Heathcliff' s tri- 
umph, the final reassertion of the pre-eminence 
of right. "Conquered good, and conquering ill" 



272 



EMILY BRONTE. 



is often pitiably true ; but not an everlasting law, 
only a too frequent accident. Perceiving this, 
Emily Bronte shows the final discomfiture of 
Heathciiff, who, kinless and kithless, was in the 
end compelled to see the property he has so 
cruelly amassed descend to his hereditary ene- 
mies. And he was baffled, not so much by 
Cathy's and Hareton's love affairs as by this 
sudden reaction from violence, this slackening of 
the heartstrings, which left him nerveless and 
anaemic, a prey to encroaching monomania. He 
had spent his life in crushing the berries for his 
revenge, in mixing that dark and maddening 
draught ; and when the final moment came, when 
he lifted it to his lips, desire had left him, he had 
no taste for it. 

" I've done no injustices," said Heathciiff; and 
though his life had been animated by hate, re- 
venge, and passion, let us reflect Avho have been 
his victims. Not the old Squire who first shel- 
tered him ; for the old man never lived to know 
his favorite's baseness, and only derived comfort 
from his presence. Catharine Earnshaw suf- 
fered, not from the character of her lover, but 
because she married a man she merely liked, 
with her eyes open to the fact that she was 
thereby wronging the man she loved. ** You 
deserve this," said Heathciiff, when she was 
dying. " You have killed yourself. Because 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 



273 



misery and degradation and death, and nothing 
that God or Satan could inflict would ever have 
parted us : you, of your own will, did it." Not 
the morality of Mayfair, but one whose lessons, 
stern and grim enough, must ever be sorrowfully 
patent to such erring and passionate spirits. The 
third of Heathcliff's victims then, or rather the 
first, was Hindley Earnshaw. But if Hindley 
had not already been a gamester and a drunkard, 
a violent and soulless man, HeathcHff could have 
gained no power over him. Hindley welcomed 
Heathcliff, as Faustus the Devil, because he could 
gratify his evil desires ; because, in his presence, 
there was no need to remember shame, nor high 
purposes, nor forsaken goodness ; and when the 
end comes, and he shall forfeit his soul, let him 
remember that there were two at that bargain. 

Isabella Linton was the most pitiable sufferer. 
Victim we can scarcely call her, who required no 
deception, but courted her doom. And after all, 
a marriage chiefly desired in order to humiliate 
a sister-in-law and show the bride to be a person 
of importance, was not intolerably requited by 
three months of wretched misery ; after so much 
she is suffered to escape. From Edgar Linton, 
as we have seen, Heathcliff's blows fell aside 
unharming, as the executioner's strokes from a 
legendary martyr. He never learnt how sec- 
ondary a place he held in his wife's heart, he never 
18 



274 EMILY BRONTE. 

knew the misery of his only daughter — misery 
soon to be turned into joy. He lived and died, 
patient, happy, trustful, unvisited by the vio- 
lence and fury that had their centre so near 
his hearth. 

The younger Catharine and Hareton suffered 
but a temporary ill ; the misery they endured 
together taught them to love ; the tyrant's rod 
had blossomed into roses. And he, lonely and 
palsied at heart, eating out his soul in bitter soli- 
tude, he saw his plans of vengeance all frustrated, 
so much elaboration so simply counteracted ; it 
was he that suffered. 

He suffered now : and Catharine Earnshaw 
who helped him to ruin by her desertion, and 
Hindley who perverted him by early oppression 
they suffered at his hands. But not the sinless 
the constant, the noble ; misery, in the end, shifts 
its dull mists before, the light of such clear spirits 
ra SpdaavTC TrdOeiv. 

" * It is a poor conclusion, is it not ? ' said Heath 
cliff, ' an absurd termination to my violent exer 
tions. I get levers and mattocks to demolish the 
two houses, and train myself to be capable of 
working like Hercules, and when everything is 
ready and in my power, I find the will to lift a 
slate off either roof has vanished.' 



Five minutes ago Hareton seemed to be a 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS. 



275 



personification of my youth, not a human being : 
I felt to him in such a variety of ways that it 
would have been impossible to have accosted him 
rationally. In the first place, his startling like- 
ness to Catharine connected him fearfully with 
her. That, however, which you may suppose the 
most potent to arrest my imagination is in reality 
the least : for what is not connected with her to 
me ? and what does not recall her ? I cannot 
look down to the floor but her features are shaped 
in the flags ! In every cloud, in every tree — 
filling the air by night and caught by glimpses 
in every object by day — I am surrounded by 
her image. The most ordinary faces of men and 
women — my own features — mock me with a 
resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful 
collection of memoranda that she did exist, and 
that I have lost her ! Well, Hareton's aspect 
was the ghost of my immortal love ; of my wild 
endeavors to hold my right ; my degradation, 
my pride, m.y happiness, and my anguish — 

" But it is frenzy to repeat these thoughts to 
you : only it will let you know why, with a reluc- 
tance to be always alone, his society is no benefit; 
rather an aggravation of the constant torment I 
suffer ; and it partly contributes to render me 
regardless how he and his cousin go on together. 
I can give them no attention any more." 

Sweet, forward Catharine and coy, passionate 



2;6 EMILY BRONTE. 

Hareton got on very prettily together. I can 
recall no more touching and lifelike scene than 
that first love-making of theirs, one rainy after- 
noon, in the kitchen where Nelly Dean is ironing 
the linen. Hareton, sulky and miserable, sitting 
by the fire, hurt by a gunshot wound, but yet 
more by the manifold rebuffs of pretty Cathy. 
She, with all her sauciness, limp in the dull, wet 
weather, coaxing him into good temper with the 
sweetest advancing graces. It is strange that in 
speaking of * Wuthering Heights ' this beautiful 
episode should be so universally forgotten, and 
only the violence and passion of more terrible 
passages associated with Emily Bronte's name. 
Yet, out of the strong cometh forth the sweet ; 
and the best honey from the dry heather-bells. 

Meanwhile, Heathcliff let them go on, fright- 
ening them more by his strange mood of abstrac- 
tion than by his accustomed ferocity. 

He could give them no attention any more. 
For four days he could neither eat nor rest, till 
his cheeks grew hollow and his eyes bloodshot, 
like a person starving with hunger, and growing 
blind with loss of sleep. 

At last one early morning, when the rain was 
streaming in at Heath cliff's flapping lattice, 
Nelly Dean, like a good housewife, went in to 
shut it to. The master must be up or out, she 
said. But pushing back the panels of the en- 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS. 



277 



closed bed, she found him there, laid on his back, 
his open eyes keen and fierce ; quite still, though 
his face and throat were washed with rain ; quite 
still, with a frightful, lifelike gaze of exultation 
under his brows, with parted lips and sharp 
white teeth that sneered — quite still and harm- 
less now ; dead and stark. 

Dead, before any vengeance had overtaken 
him, other than the slow, retributive sufferings 
of his own breast ; dead, slain by too much hope, 
and an unnatural joy. Never before had any 
villain so strange an end ; never before had any 
sufferer so protracted and sinister a torment, 
"beguiled with the spectre of a hope through 
eighteen years." 

No more public nor authoritative punishment. 
Hareton passionately mourned his lost tyrant, 
weeping in bitter earnest, and kissing the sarcas- 
tic, savage face that every one else shrunk from 
contemplating. And Heathcliff's memory was 
sacred, having in the youth he ruined a most 
valiant defender. Even Catharine might never 
bemoan his wickednesses to her husband. 

No execrations in this world or the next ; a 
great quiet envelops him. His violence was not 
strong enough to reach that final peace and mar 
its completeness. His grave is next to Cath- 
arine's, and near to Edgar Linton's ; over them 
all the wild bilberry springs, and the peat-moss 



2-]^ 



EMILY BRONTE. 



and heather. They do not reck of the passion, 
the capricious sweetness, the steady goodness, 
that he underneath. It is all one to them and 
to the larks singing aloft. 

** I lingered round the graves under that be- 
nign sky ; watched the moths fluttering among 
the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind 
breathing through the grass ; and wondered how 
any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for 
the sleepers in that quiet earth." 

So ends the story of Wuthcring Heights. 

The world is now agreed to accept that story 
as a great and tragic study of passion and sorrow, 
a wild picture of storm and moorland, of outraged 
goodness and ingratitude. The world which has 
crowned 'King Lear' with immortality, keeps a 
lesser wreath for * Wuthering Heights.' But in 
1848, the peals of triumph which acclaimed the 
success of ' Jane Eyre' had no echo for the work 
of Ellis Bell. That strange genius, brooding 
and foreboding, intense and narrow, was passed 
over, disregarded. One author, indeed, in one 
review, Sydney Dobell, in the Palladium, spoke 
nobly and clearly of the energy and genius of 
this book ; but when that clarion augury of fame 
at last was sounded, Emily did not hear. Two 
years before they had laid her in the tomb. 

No praise for Ellis Bell. It is strange to 
think that of Charlotte's two sisters it was Anne 



WUTHERING HEIGHTS: 



279 



who had the one short draught of exhilarating 
fame. When the ^Tenant of Wildfell Hall ' was 
in proof, Ellis's and Acton's publisher sold it to 
an American firm as the last and finest produc- 
tion of the author of * Jane Eyre ' and * Wuther- 
ing Heights.' Strange, that even a publisher 
could so blunder, even for his own interest. 
However, this mistake caused sufficient confu- 
sion at Cornhill to make it necessary that the 
famous Charlotte, accompanied by Anne, in her 
quality of secondary and mistakable genius, 
should go to town and explain their separate 
existence. No need to disturb the author of 
' Wuthering Heights,' that crude work of a 'pren- 
tice hand, over whose reproduction no publish- 
ers quarrelled ; such troublesome honors were 
not for her. 

" Yet," says Charlotte, " I must not be under- 
stood to make these things subject for reproach 
or complaint; I dare not do so ; respect for my 
sister's memory forbids me. By her any such 
querulous manifestation would have been re- 
garded as an unworthy and offensive weakness." 

When, indeed, did the murmur of complaint 
pass those pale, inspired lips 1 Failure can have 
come to her with no shock of aghast surprise. 
All her plans had failed ; Branwell's success, the 
school, her poems : her strong will had not car- 
ried them on to success. 



280 EMILY BRONTE. 

But though it could not bring success, it could 
support her against despair. When this last, 
dearest, strongest work of hers was weighed in 
the world's scales and found wanting, she did 
not sigh, resign herself, and think the battle 
over ; she would have fought again. 

But the battle was over, over before victory 
was declared. No more failures, no more striv- 
ings, for that brave spirit. It was in July that 
Charlotte and Anne returned from London, in 
July when the heather is in bud ; scarce one last 
withered spray was left in December to place on 
Emily's deathbed. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



SHIRLEY. 



While ' Wuthering Heights ' was still in the re- 
viewer's hands, Emily Brontes more fortunate 
sister was busy on another novel. This book 
has never attained the steady success of her 
masterpiece, 'Villette,' neither did it meet with 
the furor which greeted the first appearance of 
'Jane Eyre.' It is, indeed, inferior to either 
work ; a very quiet study of Yorkshire life, al- 
most pettifogging in its interest in ecclesiastical 
squabbles, almost absurd in the feminine inad- 
equacy of its heroes. And yet ' Shirley ' has a 
grace and beauty of its own. This it derives 
from the charm of its heroines — Caroline Hel- 
stone, a lovely portrait in character of Charlotte's 
dearest friend, and Shirley herself, a fancy like- 
ness of Emily Bronte. 

Emily Bronte, but under very different condi- 
tions. No longer poor, no longer thwarted, no 
longer acquainted with misery and menaced by 
untimely death ; not thus, but as a loving sister 
would fain have seen her, beautiful, triumphant, 



282 EMILY BRONTE. 

the spoiled child of happy fortune. Yet in these 
altered circumstances Shirley keeps her likeness 
to Charlotte's hard-working sister ; the disguise, 
haply baffling those who, like Mrs. Gaskell, 
" have not a pleasant impression of Emily 
Bronte," is very easily penetrated by those who 
love her. Under the pathetic finery so lovingly 
bestowed, under the borrowed splendors of a 
thousand a year, a lovely face, an ancestral 
manor-house, we recognize our hardy and head- 
strong heroine, and smile a little sadly at the 
inefficiency of this masquerade of grandeur, so 
indifferent and unnecessary to her. We recog- 
nize Charlotte's sister, but not the author of 
'Wuthering Heights.' Through these years we 
discern the brilliant heiress to be a person of 
infinitely inferior importance to the ill-dressed 
and overworked Vicar's daughter. Imperial Shir- 
ley, no need to wave your majestic wand, we 
have bowed to it long ago unblinded ; and all its 
illusive splendors are not so potent as that worn- 
down goose-quill which you used to wield in the 
busy kitchen of your father's parsonage. 

Yet without that admirable portrait we should 
have scant warrant for our conception of Emily 
Bronte s character. Her work is singularly im- 
personal. You gather from it that she loved the 
moors, that from her youth up the burden of a 
tragic fancy had lain hard upon her ; that she 



'SHIRLEY: 283 

had seen the face of sorrow close, meeting that 
Medusa-glance with rigid and defiant fortitude. 
So much we learn ; but this is very little — a 
one-sided truth and therefore scarcely a truth at 
all. 

Charlotte's portrait gives us another view, and 
fortunately there are still a few alive of the not 
numerous friends of Emily Bronte. Every trait, 
every reminiscence, paints in darker, clearer lines, 
the impression of character which ' Shirley ' 
leaves upon us. Shirley is indeed the exterior 
Emily, the Emily that was to be met and known 
thirty-five years ago, only a little polished, with 
the angles a little smoothed, by a sister's anxious 
care. The nobler Emily, deeply suffering, brood- 
ing, pitying, creating, is only to be found in a 
stray word here and there, a chance memory, a 
happy answer, gathered from the pages of her 
work, and the loving remembrance of her friends; 
but these remnants are so direct, unusual, per- 
sonal, and characteristic, this outline is of so de- 
cided a type, that it affects us more distinctly 
than many stippled and varnished portraits do. 

But to know how Emily Bronte looked, moved, 
sat, and spoke, we still return to * Shirley.' A 
host of corroborating memories start up in turn- 
ing the pages. Who but Emily was always 
accompanied by a " rather large, strong, and 
fierce-looking dog, very ugly, being of a breed 



284 EMILY BRONTE. 

between a mastiff and a bulldog " ? it is familiar 
to us as Una's lion ; we do not need to be told, 
Currer Bell, that she always sat on the hearthrug 
of nights, with her hand on his head, reading a 
book ; we remember well how necessary it was 
to secure him as an ally in winning her affection. 
Has not a dear friend informed us that she first 
obtained Emily's heart by meeting, without ap- 
parent fear or shrinking. Keeper's huge springs 
of demonstrative welcome ? 

Certainly " Captain Keeldar," with her cavalier 
airs, her ready disdain, her love of independence, 
does bring back with vivid brilliance the memory 
of our old acquaintance, "the Major." We rec- 
ognize that pallid slimness, masking an elastic 
strength which seems impenetrable to fatigue — 
and we sigh, recalling a passage in Anne's let- 
ters, recording how, when rheumatism, coughs, 
and influenza made an hospital of Haworth Vic- 
arage during the visitations of the dread east 
wind, Emily alone looked on and wondered why 
any one should be ill — *' she considers it a very 
uninteresting wind ; it does not affect her ner- 
vous system." We know her, too, by her kind- 
ness to her inferiors. A hundred little stories 
throng our minds. Unforgotten delicacies made 
with her own hands for her servant's friend, yet 
remembered visits of Martha's little cousin to the 
kitchen, where Miss Emily would bring in her 



SHIRLEY: 



285 



own chair for the ailing girl ; anecdotes of her 
early rising through many years to do the hard- 
est work, because the first servant was too old, 
and the second too young to get up so soon ; 
and she, Emily, was so strong. A hundred little 
sacrifices, dearer to remembrance than Shirley's 
open purse, awaken in our hearts and remind us 
that, after all, Emily was the nobler and more 
lovable heroine of the twain. 

How characteristic, too, the touch that makes 
her scornful of all that is dominant, dogmatic, 
avowedly masculine in the men of her acquaint- 
ance ; and gentleness itself to the poetic Philip 
Nunnely, the gay, boyish Mr. Sweeting, the sen- 
timental Louis, the lame, devoted boy-cousin 
who loves her in pathetic canine fashion. That 
courage, too, was hers. Not only Shirley's flesh, 
but Emily's, felt the tearing fangs of the mad 
dog to whom she had charitably offered food and 
water ; not only Shirley's flesh, but hers, shrank 
from the light scarlet, glowing tip of the Italian 
iron with which she straightway cauterized the 
wound, going quickly into the laundry and 
operating on herself without a word to any 
one. 

Emily, also, single-handed and unarmed, pun- 
ished her great bulldog for his household misde- 
meanors, in defiance of an express warning not 
to strike the brute, lest his uncertain temper 



286 EMILY BRONTE. 

should rouse him to fly at the striker's throat. 
And it was she who fomented his bruises. This 
prowess and tenderness of Shirley's is an old 
storv to us. 

And Shirley's love of picturesque and splendid 
raiment is not without an echo in our memories. 
It was Emily who, shopping in Bradford with 
Charlotte and her friend, chose a white stuff pat- 
terned with lilac thunder and lightning, to the 
scarcely concealed horror of her more sober com- 
panions. And she looked well in it ; a tall, lithe 
creature, with a grace half-queenly, half-untamed 
in her sudden, supple movements, wearing with 
picturesque negligence her ample purple-splashed 
skirts ; her face clear and pale ; her very dark 
and plenteous brown hair fastened up behind 
with a Spanish comb ; her large gray-hazel eyes, 
now full of indolent, indulgent humor, now glim- 
mering with hidden meanings, now quickened 
into flame by a flash of indignation, " a red ray 
piercing the dew." 

She, too, had Shirley's taste for the manage- 
ment of business. We remember Charlotte's 
disquiet when Emily insisted on investing Miss 
Branwell's legacies in York and Midland Rail- 
way shares. " She managed, in a most hand- 
some and able manner for me when I was in 
Brussels, and prevented by distance from look- 
ing after our interests, therefore I will let her 



SHIRLEY: 



287 



manage still and take the consequences. Dis- 
interested and energetic she certainly is ; and, 
if she be not quite so tractable or open to con- 
viction as I could wish, I must remember per- 
fection is not the lot of humanity, and, as long 
as we can regard those whom we love, and to 
whom we are closely allied, with profound and 
never-shaken esteem, it is a small thing that 
they should vex us occasionally by what appear 
to us headstrong and unreasonable notions." ^ 

So speaks the kind elder sister, the author 
of ' Shirley.' But there are some who will never 
love either type or portrait. Sydney Dobell 
spoke a bitter half-truth when, ignorant of Shir- 
ley's real identity, he declared : *' We have only 
to imagine Shirley Keeldar poor to imagine her 
repulsive." The silenced pride, the thwarted 
generosity, the unspoken power, the contained 
passion, of such a nature are not qualities which 
touch the world when it finds them in an ob- 
scure and homely woman. Even now, very 
many will not love a heroine so independent of 
their esteem. They will resent the frank im- 
periousness, caring not to please, the unyielding 
strength, the absence of trivial submissive ten- 
dernesses, for which she makes amends by such 
large humane and generous compassion. " In 
Emily's nature," says her sister, " the extremes 

1 Mrs. Gaskell. 



288 EMILY BRONTE. 

of vigor and simplicity seemed to meet. Under 
an unsophisticated culture, inartificial taste and 
an unpretending outside, lay a power and fire 
that might have informed the brain and kindled 
the veins of a hero ; but she had no worldly 
wisdom — her powers were unadapted to the 
practical business of life — she would fail to de- 
fend her most manifest rights, to consult her 
legitimate advantage. An interpreter ought al- 
ways to have stood between her and the world. 
Her will was not very flexible and it generally 
opposed her interest. Her temper was mag- 
nanimous, but warm and sudden ; her spirit 
altogether unbending." ^ 

So speaks Emily's inspired interpreter, whose 
genius has not made her sister popular. * Shir- 
ley ' is not a favorite with a modern public. 
Emily Bronte was born out of date. Athene, 
leading the nymphs in their headlong chase 
down the rocky spurs of Olympus, and stopping 
in full career to lift in her arms the weanlings, 
tender as dew, or the chance-hurt cubs of the 
mountain, might have chosen her as her hunt- 
fellow. Or Brunhilda, the strong Valkyr, dread- 
ing the love of man, whose delight is battle and 
the wild summits of hills, forfeiting her immor- 
tality to shield the helpless and the weak ; she 
would have recognized the kinship of this last- 

1 'Biographical Notice.' C. Bronte. 



^SHIRLEY: 289 

born sister. But we moderns care not for these. 
Our heroines are Juliet, Desdemona, and Irriogen, 
our examples Dorothea Brooke and Laura Pen- 
dennis, women whose charm is a certain fra- 
grance of affection. Shirley is too independent 
for our taste ; and, for the rest, we are all in 
love with Caroline Helstone. 

Disinterested, headstrong, noble Emily Bronte, 
at this time, while your magical sister was weav- 
ing for you, with golden words, a web of fate as 
fortunate as dreams, the true Norns were spin- 
ning a paler shrouding garment. You were 
never to see the brightest things in life. Sis- 
terly love, free solitude, unpraised creation, were 
to remain your most poignant joys. No touch 
of love, no hint of fame, no hours of ease, lie for 
you across the knees of Fate. Neither rose 
nor laurel will be shed on your coffined form. 
Meanwhile, your sister writes and dreams for 
Shirley. Terrible difference between ideas and 
truth ; wonderful magic of the unreal to take 
their sting from the veritable wounds we en- 
dure ! 

Neither rose nor laurel will we lay reverently 
for remembrance over the tomb where you sleep ; 
but the flower that was always your own, the 
wild, dry heather. You, who were, in your 
sister's phrase, " moorish, wild and knotty as a 
root of heath," you grew to your own perfection 
19 



290 



EMILY BRONTE. 



on the waste where no laurel rustles its polished 
leaves, where no sweet, fragile rose ever opened 
in the heart of June. The storm and the winter 
darkness, the virgin earth, the blasting winds of 
March, would have slain them utterly ; but all 
these served to make the heather light and 
strong, to flush its bells with a ruddier purple, 
to fill its cells with honey more pungently sweet. 
The cold wind and wild earth make the heather ; 
it would not grow in the sheltered meadows. 
And you, had you known the fate that love 
would have chosen, you too would not have 
thrived in your full bloom. Another happy, 
prosperous north-country matron would be dead. 
But now you live, still singing of freedom, the 
undying soul of courage and loneliness, another 
voice in the wind, another glory on the moun- 
tain-tops, Emily Bronte, the author of ' Wuther- 
ing Heights.' 



CHAPTER XVII. 



BRANWELL S END. 



The autumn .of the year 1848 was tempestuous 
and wild, with sudden and frequent changes of 
temperature, and cold penetrating wind. Those 
chilling blasts whirling round the small gray 
parsonage on its exposed hill-top, brought sick- 
ness in their train. Anne and Charlotte drooped 
and languished ; Branwell, too, was ill. His 
constitution seemed shattered by excesses which 
he had not the resolution to forego. Often he 
would sleep most of the day ; or at least sit 
dozing hour after hour in a lethargy of weak- 
ness ; but with the night this apathy would 
change to violence and suffering. " Papa, and 
sometimes all of us have sad nights with him," 
writes Charlotte in the last days of July. 

Yet, so well the little household knew the 
causes of this reverse, no immediate danger was 
suspected. He was weak, certainly, and his 
appetite failed ; but opium-eaters are not strong 
nor hungry. Neither Branwell himself, nor his 
relations, nor any physician consulted in his 



292 



EMILY BRONTE. 



case, thought it one of immediate clanger ; it 
seemed as if this dreary Ufe might go on for- 
ever, marking its hours by a perpetual swing 
and rebound of excess and suffering. 

During this melancholy autumn Mr. Grundy 
was staying at Skipton, a town about seventeen 
miles from Haworth. Mindful of his old friend, 
he invited Branwell to be his guest ; but the 
dying youth was too weak to make even that 
little journey, although he longed for the excite- 
ment of change. Mr. Grundy was so much 
moved by the miserable tone of Branwell's letter 
that he drove over to Haworth to see for himself 
what ailed his old companion. He was very 
shocked at the change. Pale, sunk, tremulous, 
utterly wrecked; there was no hope for Bran- 
well now ; he had again taken to eating opium. 

Anything for excitement, for a variation to his 
incessant sorrow. Weak as he was, and scarcely 
able to leave his bed, he craved piteously for an 
appointment of any kind, any reason for leaving 
Haworth, for getting quit of his old thoughts, 
any post anywhere for Heaven's sake so it were 
out of their whispering. He had not long to wait. 

Later in that cold and bleak September Mr. 
Grundy again visited Haworth. He sent to the 
Vicarage for Branwell, and ordered dinner and 
a fire to welcome him ; the room looked cosy 
and warm. While Mr. Grundy sat waiting for 



BRANWELVS END. 293 

his guest, the Vicar was shown in. He, too, 
was strangely altered ; much of his old stiffness 
of manner gone ; and it was with genuine affec- 
tion that he spoke of Branwell, and almost with 
despair that he touched on his increasing mis- 
eries. When Mr. Grundy's message had come, 
the poor, self-distraught sufferer had been lying 
ill in bed, apparently too weak to move ; but the 
feverish restlessness which marked his latter 
years was too strong to resist the chance of ex- 
citement. He had insisted upon coming, so his 
father said, and would immediately be ready. 
Then the sorrowful, half-blind old gentleman 
made his adieus to his son's host, and left the inn. 
" Presently the door opened cautiously, and a 
head appeared. It was a mass of red, unkempt, 
uncut hair, wildly floating round a great, gaunt 
forehead ; the cheeks yellow and hollow, the 
mouth fallen, the thin white lips not trembling 
but shaking, the sunken eyes, once small, now 
glaring with the light of madness — all told the 
sad tale but too surely. I hastened to my friend, 
greeted him in my gayest manner, as I knew he 
best liked, drew him quickly into the room, and 
forced upon him a stiff glass of hot brandy. 
Under its influence and that of the bright, 
cheerful surroundings, he looked frightened — 
frightened of himself. He glanced at me a mo- 
ment, and muttered something of leaving a warm 



294 



EMILY BRONTE, 



bed to come out in the cold night. Another 
glass of brandy, and returning warmth gradually- 
brought him back to something like the Bronte 
of old. He even ate some dinner, a thing which 
he said he had not done for long ; so our last 
interview was pleasant though grave. I never 
knew his intellect clearer. He described him- 
self as waiting anxiously for death — indeed, 
longing for it, and happy, in these his sane mo- 
ments, to think it was so near. He once again 
declared that that death would be due to the 
story I knew, and to nothing else. 

*' When at last I was compelled to leave, he 
quietly drew from his coat-sleeve a carving-knife, 
placed it on the table, and, holding me by both 
hands, said that, having given up all hopes of 
ever seeing me again, he imagined when my 
message came that it was a call from Satan. 
Dressing Jiimself, he took the knife which he 
had long secreted, and came to the inn, with a 
full determination to rush into the room and 
stab the occupant. In the excited state of his 
mind, he did not recognize me when he opened 
the door, but my voice and manner conquered 
him, and 'brought him home to himself,' as he 
expressed it. I left him standing bare-headed in 
the road with bowed form and dropping tears." ^ 

He went home, and a few days afterwards he 

1 Pictures of the Past. 



BRANWELLS END. 



295 



died." That little intervening time was happier 
and calmer than any he had known for years ; 
his evil habits, his hardened feelings, slipped, like 
a mask, from the soul already touched by the 
.final quiet. He was singularly altered and soft- 
ened, gentle and loving to the father and sisters 
who had borne so much at his hands. It was as 
though he had awakened from the fierce delir- 
ium of a fever ; weak though he was and shat- 
tered, they could again recognize in him their 
Branwell of old times, the hope and promise of 
all their early dreams. Neither they nor he 
dreamed that the end was so near ; he had often 
talked of death, but now that he stood in the 
shadow of its wings, he was unconscious of that 
subduing presence. And it is pleasant to think 
that the sweet demeanor of his last days was not 
owing to the mere cowardly fear of death ; but 
rather a return of the soul to its true self, a nat- 
ural dropping-off of all extraneous fever and 
error, before the suffering of its life should close. 
Half an hour before he died Branwell was un- 
conscious of danger ; he was out in the village 
two days before, and was only confined to bed 
one single day. The next morning was a Sun- 
day, the 24th of September. Branwell awoke 
to it perfectly conscious, and through the holy 
quiet of that early morning he lay, troubled by 
neither fear nor suffering, while the bells of 



296 



EMILY BRONTE. 



the neighboring church, the neighboring tower 
whose fabulous antiquity had furnished him with 
many a boyish pleasantry, called the villagers to 
worship. They all knew him, all as they passed 
the house would look up and wonder if " t' Vic- 
ar' s*Patrick" were better or worse. But those of 
the Parsonage were not at church: they watched 
in Branwell's hushed and peaceful chamber. 

Suddenly a terrible change came over the 
quiet face ; there was no mistaking the sudden, 
heart-shaking summons. And now Charlotte 
sank ; always nervous and highly strung, the 
mere dread of what might be to come, laid her 
prostrate. They led her away, and for a week 
she kept her bed in sickness and fever. But 
Branwell, the summoned, the actual sufferer, 
met death with a different face. He insisted 
upon getting up ; if he had succumbed to the 
horrors of life he would defy -the horrors of ex- 
tinction ; he would die as he thought no one had 
ever died before, standing. So, like some an- 
cient Celtic hero, when the last agony began, he 
rose to his feet ; hushed and awe-stricken, ilie 
old father, praying Anne, loving Emily, looked 
on. He rose to his feet and died erect after 
twenty minutes' struggle. 

They found his pockets filled with the letters 
of the woman he had so passionately loved. 

He was dead, this Branwell who had wrung 



BRANWELLS END. 



297 



the hearts of his household day by day, who 
drank their tears as wine. He was dead, and 
now they mourned him with acute and bitter 
pain. " All his vices were and are nothing now ; 
we remember only his woes," writes Charlotte. 
They buried him in the same vault that had been 
opened twenty-three years ago to receive the 
childish, wasted corpses of Elizabeth and Maria- 
Sunday came round, recalling minute by minute 
the ebbing of his life, and Emily Bronte, pallid 
and dressed in black, can scarcely have heard 
her brother's funeral sermon for looking at the 
stone which hid so many memories, such useless 
compassion. She took her brother's death very 
much to heart, growing thin and pale and saying 
nothing. She had made an effort to go to church 
that Sunday, and as she sat there, quiet and 
hollow-eyed, perhaps she felt it was well that 
she had looked upon his resting-place, upon the 
grave where so much of her heart was buried- 
For, after his funeral, she never rallied ; a cold 
and cough, taken then, gained fearful hold upon 
hei, and she never went out of doors after that 
memorable Sunday. 

But looking on her quiet, uncomplaining eyes» 
you would not have guessed so much. 

" Emily and Anne are pretty well," says Char- 
lotte, on the 9th of October, " though Anne is 
always delicate and Emily has a cold and cough 
at present." 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



EMILY S DEATH. 



Already by the 29th of October of this melan- 
choly year of 1848 Emily's cough and cold had 
made such progress as to alarm her careful elder 
sister. Before Branwell's death she had been, 
to all appearance, the one strong member of a 
delicate family. By the side of fragile Anne 
(already, did they but know it, advanced in 
tubercular consumption), of shattered Branvvcll, 
of Charlotte, ever nervous and ailing, this tall, 
muscular Emily had appeared a tower of strength. 
Working early and late, seldom tired and never 
complaining, finding her best relaxation in long, 
rough walks on the moors, she seemed unlikely 
to give them any poignant anxiety. But the 
seeds of phthisis lay deep down beneath this fair 
show of life and strength ; the shock of sorrow 
which she experienced for her brother's death 
developed them with alarming rapidity. 

The weariness of absence had always proved 
too much for Emily's strength. Away from 
home we have seen how she pined and sickened. 



EMrr.VS DEATH. 



299 



Exile made her thin and wan, menaced the very 
sprinp^s of life. And now she must endure an 
incvital^le and unending absence, an exile from 
wliich there could be no return. The; strain was 
too tight, the wrench too sharp : J'^mily could 
not bear it and live. In such a loss as hers, be- 
reaved of a helpless sufferer, the mourning of 
those who remain is imbittered and quickened a 
hundred times a day when the blank minutes 
come round for which the customary duties are 
missing, when the unwelcome leisure hangs 
round the weary soul like a shapeless and en- 
cumbering garment. It was JCmily who had 
chiefly devoted herself to I^ranwcU. lie being 
dead, the motive of her life seemed gone. 

Had she been stronger, had she been more 
careful of herself at the beginning of her illness, 
she would doubtless have recovered, and we shall 
never know the difference in our literature which 
a little {precaution might have made. Jkit JCmily 
was accustomed to consider herself hardy ; she 
was so used to wait upon others that to lie down 
and be waited on would have appeared to her 
ignominious and absurd. I^oth her independence 
and her unselfishness made her very chary of giv- 
ing trouble. It is, moreover, extremely probable 
that she never realized the extent of her own 
illness ; consumption is seldom a malady that 
despairs ; attacking the body it leaves the spirit 



300 EMILY BRONTE, 

free, the spirit which cannot realize a danger by 
which it is not injured. A Httle later on when 
it was Anne's turn to suffer, she is choosing 
her spring bonnet four days before her death. 
Which of us does not remember some such pa- 
thetic tale of the heart-wringing, vain confidence 
of those far gone in phthisis, who bear on their 
faces the marks of death for all eyes but their 
own to read } 

To those who look on, there is no worse agony 
than to watch the brave bearing of these others 
unconscious of the sudden grave at their feet. 
Charlotte and Anne looked on and trembled. 
On the 29th of October, Charlotte, still delicate 
from the bilious fever which had prostrated her 
on the day of Branwell's death, writes these 
words already full of foreboding : 

" I feel much more uneasy about my sister 
than myself just now. Emily's cold and cough 
are very obstinate. I fear she has pain in her 
chest, and I sometimes catch a shortness in her 
breathing when she has moved at all quickly. 
She looks very thin and pale. Her reserved 
nature occasions me great uneasiness of mind. 
It is useless to question her ; you get no answer. 
It is still more useless to recommend remedies ; 
they are never adopted." ^ 

It was, in fact, an acute inflammation of the 

1 Mrs. Gaskell. 



EMILY'S DEATH. 301 

lungs which this unfortunate sufferer was trying 
to subdue by force of courage. To persons of 
strong will it is difficult to realize that their dis- 
ease is not in their own control. To be ill, is 
with them an act of acquiescence; they have 
consented to the demands of their feeble body. 
When necessity demands the sacrifice, it seems 
to them so easy to deny themselves the rest, the 
indulgence. They set their will against their 
weakness, and mean to conquer. They will not 
give up. 

Emily would not give up. She felt herself 
doubly necessary to the household in this hour 
of trial. Charlotte was still very weak and ail- 
ing. Anne, her dear little sister, was unusually 
delicate and frail. Even her father had not 
quite escaped. That she, Emily, who had always 
been relied upon for strength and courage and 
endurance, should show herself unworthy of the 
trust when she was most sorely needed ; that 
she, so inclined to take all duties on herself, so 
necessary to the daily management of the house, 
should throw up her charge in this moment of 
trial, cast away her arms in the moment of battle, 
and give her fellow-sufferers the extra burden of 
her weakness, — such a thing was impossible to 
her. 

So the vain struggle went on. She would 
resign no one of her duties, and it was not till 



302 



EMILV BRONTE. 



within the last weeks of her life that she would 
so much as suffer the servant to rise before her 
in the morning and take the early work. She 
would not endure to hear of remedies ; declaring 
that she was not ill, that she would soon be well, 
in the pathetic self-delusion of high-spirited 
weakness. And Charlotte and Anne, for whose 
sake she made this sacrifice, suffered terribly 
thereby. Willingly, thankfully would they have 
taken all her duties upon them ; they burned to 
be up and doing. But — seeing how weak she 
was — they dare not cross her ; they had to sit 
still and endure to see her labor for their comfort 
with faltering and death-cold hands. 

" Day by day," says Charlotte, " day by day, 
when I saw with what a front she met suffering, 
I looked on her with a wonder of anguish and 
love. I have seen nothing like it ; but, indeed, 
I have never seen her parallel in anything. 
Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her 
nature stood alone. The awful point was that, 
while full of ruth for others, on herself she had 
no pity ; the spirit was inexorable to the flesh ; 
from the trembling hand, the unnerved limbs, 
the fading eyes, the same service was exacted as 
they had rendered in health. To stand by and 
witness this, and not dare to remonstrate, was a 
pain no words can render." 

The time went on. Anxious to try what in- 



EMILY'S DEATH. 303 

fluence some friend, not of their own household, 
might exert upon this wayward sister, Charlotte 
thought of inviting Miss Nussey to Haworth. 
Emily had ever been glad to welcome her. But 
when the time came it was found that the least 
disturbance of the day's routine would only 
make Emily's burden heavier. And that scheme, 
too, was relinquished. 

Another month had gone. Emily, paler and 
thinner, but none the less resolute, fulfilled her 
duties with customary exactness, and insisted on 
her perfect health with defiant fortitude. On the 
23d of November, Charlotte writes again : 

" I told you Emily was ill in my last letter. 
She has not rallied yet. She is very ill. I 
believe if you were to see her your impression 
would be that there is no hope. A more hollow, 
wasted, pallid aspect I have not beheld. The 
deep, tight cough continues ; the breathing after 
the least exertion is a rapid pant ; and these 
symptoms are accompanied by pains in the chest 
and side. Her pulse, the only time she allowed 
it to be felt, was found to beat 115 per minute. 
In this state she resolutely refuses to see a doc- 
tor ; she will give no explanation of her feel- 
ings ; she will scarcely allow her feelings to be 
alluded to." 

" No poisoning doctor" should come near her, 
Emily declared with the irritability of her dis- 



304 EMILY BRONTE. 

case. It was an insull lo her will, her resolute 
endeavors. She was not, would not, be ill, and 
could therefore need no cure. Perhaps she felt, 
deep in her heart, the conviction that her com- 
l^laint was mortal ; that a delay in the sentence 
was all that care and skill could give ; for she 
had seen Maria and IClizabcth fade and die, and 
only lately the physicians had not saved her 
brother. 

JUit Charlotte, naturally, did not feel the same. 
Unknown to Emily, she wrote to a great London 
doctor, drawing up a statement of the case and 
symptoms as minute and careful as she could 
give. But either this diagnosis by guesswork 
was too ini]-)crfect, or the physician saw that 
there was no hope ; for his opinion was ex- 
pressed too obscurely to be of any use. He 
sent a bottle of medicine, but Emily would not 
take it. 

December came, and still the wondering, anx- 
ious sisters knew not what to think. By this 
time Mr. Bronte also had perceived the danger 
of Emily's state, and he was very anxious. 
Yet she still denied that she was ill with any- 
thing more grave than a }xissing weakness; 
and the pain in her side and chest appeared to 
diminish. Sometimes the little household was 
temptetl to take her at her word, and believe 
that socm, with the spring, she would recover; 



EMILY'S DEATH. 



305 



and then, hearing her cough, hstening to the 
gasping breath with which she cUmbed the short 
staircase, looking on the extreme emaciation of 
her form, the wasted hands, the hollow eyes, 
their hearts would suddenly fail. Life was a 
daily contradiction of hope and fear. 

The days drew on towards Christmas ; it was 
already the middle of December, and still Emily 
was about the house, able to wait upon herself, 
to sew for the others, to take an active share in 
the duties of the day. She always fed the dogs 
herself. One Monday evening, it must have 
been about the 14th of December, she rose as 
usual to give the creatures their supper. She 
got up, walking slowly, holding out in her thin 
hands an apronful of broken meat and bread. 
But when she reached the flagged passage the 
cold took her ; she staggered on the uneven 
pavement and fell against the wall. Her sisters, 
virho had been sadly following her, unseen, came 
forwards much alarmed and begged her to desist ; 
but, smiling wanly, she went on and gave Floss 
and Keeper their last supper from her hands. 

The next morning she was worse. Before her 
waking, her watching sisters heard the low, 
unconscious moaning that tells of suffering con- 
tinued even^epy:sleep ; and they feared for what 
the coming year might hold in store. Of the 
nearness of the end they did not dream. Char- 



3o6 EMILY BRONTE. 

lotte had been out over the moors, searching 
every glen and hollow for a sprig of heather, 
however pale and dry, to take to her moor-loving 
sister. But Emily looked on the flower laid on 
her pillow with indifferent eyes. She was al- 
ready estranged and alienate from life. 

Nevertheless she persisted in rising, dressing 
herself alone, and doing everything for herself. 
A fire had been lit in the room, and Emily sat 
on the hearth to comb her hair. She was 
thinner than ever now — the tall, loose-jointed 
" slinky " girl — her hair in its plenteous dark 
abundance was all of her that was not marked 
by the branding finger of death. She sat on the 
hearth combing her long brown hair. But soon 
the comb slipped from her feeble grasp into the 
cinders. She, the intrepid, active Emily, watched 
it burn and smoulder, too weak to lift it, while 
the nauseous, hateful odor of burnt bone rose 
into her face. At last the servant came in : 
" Martha," she said, " my comb's down there ; 
I was too weak to stoop and pick it up." 

I have seen that old, broken comb, with a 
large piece burned out of it ; and have thought 
it, I own, more pathetic than the bones of the 
eleven thousand virgins at Cologne, or the time- 
blackened Holy Face of Luccah^'Sad, chance 
confession of human weakness ; mournful coun- 
terpart of that chainless soul which to the end 



EMILrS DEATH. 



307 



maintained its fortitude and rebellion. The flesh 
is weak. Since I saw that relic, the strenuous 
verse of Emily Bronte's last poem has seemed to 
me far more heroic, far more moving ; remem- 
bering in what clinging and prisoning garments 
that free spirit was confined. 

The flesh was weak, but Emily would grant it 
no indulgence. She finished her dressing, and 
came very slowly, with dizzy head and tottering 
steps, down-stairs into the little, bare parlor 
where Anne was working and Charlotte writing 
a letter. Emily took up some work and tried to 
sew. Her catching breath, her drawn and altered 
face, were ominous of the end. But still a little 
hope flickered in those sisterly hearts. " She 
grows daily weaker," wrote Charlotte, on that 
memorable Tuesday morning ; seeing surely no 
portent that this — this ! was to be the last of 
the days and the hours of her weakness. 

The morning grew on to noon, and Emily 
grew worse. She could no longer speak, but — 
gasping in a husky whisper — she said : " If you 
will send for a doctor. I will see him now ! " 
Alas, it was too late. The shortness of breath 
and rending pain increased ; even Emily could 
no longer conceal them. Towards two o'clock 
her sisters begged her, in an agony, to let them 
put her to bed. " No, no," she cried ; tormented 
with the feverish restlessness that comes before 



308 EMILY BRONTE. 

the last, most quiet peace. She tried to rise, 
leaning with one hand upon the sofa. And thus 
the chord of life snapped. She was dead. 

She was twenty-nine years old. 

They buried her, a few days after, under the 
church pavement ; under the slab of stone where 
their mother lay, and Maria and Elizabeth and 
Branwell. 

She who had so mourned her brother had ver- 
ily found him again, and should sleep well at 
his side. 

And though no wind ever rustles over the grave 
on which no scented heather springs, nor any 
bilberry bears its sprigs of "greenest leaves and 
purple fruit, she will not miss them now ; she 
who wondered how any could imagine unquiet 
slumbers for them that sleep in the quiet earth. 
They followed her to her grave, her old father, 
Charlotte, the dying Anne ; and as they left the 
doors, they were joined by another mourner. 
Keeper, Emily's dog. He walked in front of all, 
first in the rank of mourners ; and perhaps no 
other creature had known the dead woman quite 
so well. When they had laid her to sleep in the 
dark, airless vault under the church, and when 
they had crossed the bleak churchyard, and had 
entered the empty house again, Keeper went 



EMILYS DEATH. 309 

Straight to the door of the room where his mis- 
tress used to sleep, and lay down across the 
threshold. There he howled pitcously for many 
days ; knowing not that no lamentations could 
wake her any more. Over the little parlor below 
a great calm had settled. " Why should we be 
otherwise than calm 1 " says Charlotte, writing to 
her friend on the 21st of December. " The an- 
guish of seeing her suffer is over ; the spectacle 
of the pains of death is gone by; the funeral day 
is past. We feel she is at peace. No need now 
to tremble for the hard frost and the keen wind. 
Emily does not feel them." 

The death was over, indeed, and the funeral 
day was past ; yet one duty remained to the 
heart-wrung mourners, not less poignant than 
the sight of the dead changed face, not less 
crushing than the thud of stones and clods on 
the coffin of one beloved. They took the great 
brown desk in which she used to keep her papers, 
and sorted and put in order all that they found 
in it. How appealing the sight of that hurried, 
casual writing of a hand now stark in death ! 
How precious each of those pages whose like 
should never be made again till the downfall of 
the earth in the end of time ! How near, how 
utterly cut off, the Past ! 

They found no novel, half-finished or begun, 
in the old brown desk which she used to rest on 



310 



EMILY BRONTE. 



her knees, sitting under the thorns. But they 
discovered a poem, written at the end of Emily's 
life, profound, sincere, as befits the last words 
one has time to speak. It is the most perfect 
and expressive of her work : the fittest monu- 
ment to her heroic spirit. 

Thus run the last lines she ever traced : 

" No coward soul is mine, 
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere ; 

I see heaven's glories shine, 
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. 

" O God, within my breast, 
Almighty, ever-present Deity ! 

Life, that in me has rest, 
As I — undying life — have power in thee. 

" Vain are the thousand creeds 
That move men's hearts : unutterably vain ; 

Worthless as withered weeds, 
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main. 

" To waken doubt in one 
Holding so fast by thine infinity; 

So surely anchored on 
The steadfast rock of immortality. 

" With wide-embracing love 
Thy spirit animates eternal years, 

Pervades and broods above, 
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. 

" Though earth and man were gone. 
And suns and universes ceased to be. 

And thou wert left alone, 
Every existence would exist in thee. 



EMILVS DEATH. 

" There is not room for Death, 
No atom that his might could render void ; 

Thou — thou art Being, Breath, 
And what thou art may never be destroyed. 



311 



FINIS ! 

" She died in a time of promise." 

So writes Charlotte, in the first flush of her 
grief. " She died in a time of promise ; " hav- 
ing done much, indeed, having done enough to 
bring her powers to ripe perfection. And the 
fruit of that perfection is denied us. She died, 
between the finishing of labor and the award of 
praise. Before the least hint of the immortality 
that has been awarded her could reach her in 
her obscure and distant home. Without one 
success in all her life, with her school never 
kept, her verses never read, her novel never 
praised, her brother dead in ruin. All her am- 
bitions had flagged and died of the blight. But 
she was still young, ready to live, eager to try 
again. 

*' She died in a time of promise. We saw her 
taken from life in its prime." 

Truly a prime of sorrow, the dark mid-hour of 
the storm, dark with the grief gone by and the 
blackness of the on-coming grief. With Bran- 



FINIS. 



313 



well dead, with her dearest sister dying, Emily 
died. Had she lived, what profit could she have 
made of her life ? For us, indeed, it would have 
been well ; but for her ? Fame in solitude is 
bitter food ; and Anne will die in May ; and 
Charlotte six years after ; and Emily never could 
make new friends. Better far for her, that lov- 
ing, faithful spirit, to die while still her life was 
dear, while still there was hope in the world, 
than to linger on a few years longer, in loneli- 
ness and weakness, to quit in fame and misery a 
disillusioned life. 

" She died in a time of promise. We saw her 
taken from life in its prime. But it is God's 
will, and the place where she is gone is better 
than that she has left." 

Truly better, to leave her soul to speak in the 
world for aye, for the wind to be stronger for 
her breath, and the heather more purple from 
her heart ; better far to be lost in the all-embra- 
cing, all-transmuting process of life, than to live 
in cramped and individual pain. So at least, 
wrong or right, thought this woman who loved 
the earth so well. She was not afraid to die. 
The thought of death filled her with no perplex- 
ities, but with assured and happy calm. She 
held it more glorious than fame, and sweeter 
than love, to give her soul to God and her body 
to the earth. And which of us shall carp at 



3 1 4 EMIL Y BRONTE. 

the belief which made a very painful life con- 
tented ? 

" The thing that irks me most is this shat- 
tered prison, after all. I'm tired of being en- 
closed here. I'm wearying to escape into that 
glorious world, and to be always there ; not see- 
ing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it 
through the walls of an aching heart; but really 
with it and in it. You think you are better 
and more fortunate than I, in full health and 
strength ; you are sorry for me — very soon that 
will be altered. I shall be sorry for you. I shall 
be incomparably above and beyond you all." ^ 

Ah, yes ; incomparably above and beyond. 
Not only because of the keen vision with which 
she has revealed the glorious world in which her 
memory is fresher wind and brighter sunshine ; 
not only for that, but because the remembrance 
of her living self is a most high and noble pre- 
cept. Never before were hands so inspired alike 
for daily drudgery, and for golden writing never 
to fade. Never was any heart more honorable 
and strong, nor any more pitiful to shameful 
weakness. Seldom, indeed, has any man, more 
seldom still any woman, owned the inestimable 
gift of genius and never once made it an excuse 
for a weakness, a violence, a failing, which in 
other mortals we condemn. No deed of hers 

1 ' Wuthering Heights.' 



FINIS. 



315 



requires such apology. Therefore, being dead 
she persuades us to honor ; and not only her 
works but the memory of her life shall rise up 
and praise her, who lived without praise so 
well. 



THE END. 



University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 



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THE LIFE OF RICHARD COBDEN. By John Mor- 

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